[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house. Hey guys, it's Eric G and we've got four amazing segments with four different guests. You might've seen him on Dr. Phil recently talking the trades where you've seen him on YouTube or LinkedIn. We have Roger Wakefield, the expert plumber. We also have the founder of Sky Lift Hardware for your next patio cover project.

[00:00:24] Eric Goranson: And we also have Chris Berry, my friend, the Idaho painter. For all of your exterior painting tips. If you want to find out more about us here at around the house, head over to around the house, online. com for all the podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and the television show. Today, we start out the show with easy lawn care with Craig O'Worthy from Lawn Bright, and how you can easily have the greenest lawn in the neighborhood.

[00:00:49] Eric Goranson: Let's check it out. When

[00:00:50] Chris Berry: it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got

[00:00:56] Eric Goranson: you covered. This is a ride. [00:01:00] When it comes to lawn care, there's a ton of science that gets included, making sure you've got the greenest and healthiest lawn out there. And one of my go to guys is Craig Elworthy from Lawnbrite.

[00:01:14] Eric Goranson: Welcome to Around the House, brother.

[00:01:17] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, Eric. Thanks for turning me on again. It's great to be

[00:01:20] Eric Goranson: here. Great to see you. And you guys have got this amazing service, which really walks people through how to get the greenest and healthiest lawn.

[00:01:30] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, we do. We do. And it actually, it all starts with with the soil test.

[00:01:34] Craig Elworthy: So we are very much in the camp of knowing what's in your soil, knowing what's underneath the lawn is the key to actually having establishing a healthy turf stand. So, yeah, we walk them all the way through. All our products are all liquid and you really just need a hose to just spray on the patient's lung or deliver during our temporary season.

[00:01:58] Eric Goranson: Man, that is great. And I noticed [00:02:00] got a lot of organic stuff going as well.

[00:02:03] Craig Elworthy: We do, yeah, a lot of our, a lot of our products are OMRI and certified, so you can use them. All of our products are natural, so there's no harsh chemicals that we make. We have pretty good products where we are not going to use anything.

[00:02:19] Craig Elworthy: Where your kids and your pets aren't safe to go on the lawn really immediately right after about the treatment.

[00:02:26] Eric Goranson: Man, that is great. And you guys are really growing each and every year. I jumped on your website since the last time we talked and you have so many more things for everything outside.

[00:02:36] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, we added, we added, uh, a few products actually in the last year and really a lot of it's due out of customer requests.

[00:02:43] Craig Elworthy: A lot of people are asking, do you have grass seed? Do you have something for this? Do you have some for ticks and mosquitoes? In previous years, the answer, but we've looked into it and we took the approach. Can we do this? And still maintain our core beliefs, right? Can we do this naturally? And the answer [00:03:00] with a lot of the products we added was yes.

[00:03:04] Eric Goranson: I noticed a lot of people out there right now that are paying for lawn services. They pay for the X plan and I'm just going to make up a name right there, but they come out, somebody rolls out, they, there's no soil tests done. They pull out a reel hose. They go over, they spray the lawn or they apply something.

[00:03:22] Eric Goranson: And then you see them next month or next quarter, you guys have really based this on the science and have got your own DIY lawn care program, which to me seems a lot more science based than some of the subscription models that you see where people are showing up on your door each week.

[00:03:38] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, and that was a big part of it too.

[00:03:40] Craig Elworthy: We wanted to make sure that certainly it needed to all be safe for people to use. You also need to get results as well. We did, we were focused on making sure that I'm using soil test kit and you always going on your oil, but then we also found that a lot of people were very [00:04:00] comfortable with the idea of doing this themselves as long as they have the right guidance, right?

[00:04:05] Craig Elworthy: So they didn't really know. Anything right about detaching, or when the right time was to do it, or when the right time is to irrigate, how long. So, our platform that we've created, helps and proactively guides them through these steps. So that they don't really need to be paying thousands of dollars for a lawn care service to come and do all of this stuff themselves, where they're putting down God knows what on the lawn.

[00:04:31] Craig Elworthy: And tell me not to watch for a day. You can do this yourself and it's not that hard. That's what we've really tapped into is people are completely accepting. That that is easy for them to do. And it's actually, you can get better results doing it yourself.

[00:04:46] Eric Goranson: So if Craig, if somebody wanted to sign up for this with you guys, what's the process?

[00:04:49] Eric Goranson: How does that work?

[00:04:51] Craig Elworthy: Yeah. So you just, you go to our website, get law bright. com. You start right at the top of the homepage. There's a quiz and it just asks you three or four [00:05:00] simple questions about what your lawn care routine is, your lawn, where you live. You have to guess about your approximate lawn size.

[00:05:06] Craig Elworthy: You can use a lot of. Calculator there on our site where you can just draw a little area on your lawn and you can do it on your exact location. And then you can just select your package right there. You can choose whether you want free immersion or whether you want grass seed included with that package.

[00:05:24] Craig Elworthy: Uh, and then you can just purchase it right there and within a few days your, uh, all your products will be there along with your spell tested.

[00:05:33] Eric Goranson: Nice, and what is that soil test kit for people that don't understand really what's going on with soil testing?

[00:05:39] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, yeah, and I don't mean to make it sound too extreme or elaborate.

[00:05:42] Craig Elworthy: It's really just a, a mailer, right? It comes and all you have to do is scoop some dirt into the soil test kit. Um, pre paid, um, mailer with the bag and you're good to go. And send it off and put it in your mailbox, and it goes off to our lab. And from there, you're going to get about a week [00:06:00] later, you're going to get a detailed report.

[00:06:01] Craig Elworthy: With everything that's in your style, um. 10 to 12 different data points, but then we, we don't just give you that, right? We give you the information associated with it. We give you how we're going to change your plan and adjust your plan going forward. So you're only going to receive. The nutrients that you are wrong in your soil actually needs.

[00:06:20] Craig Elworthy: And then if you do need to do anything, I'll call it drastic, right? Where you are, we see the pH is off in one direction or the other. And we're going to say, Hey, look, you know, you can spray this stuff all day. But you've really going to get the best benefit of going out and just getting maybe that line for six or 8 at a local store and putting that on there and then using that because that's going to actually make a lot of the stuff that's locked up in your oil plant available.

[00:06:51] Craig Elworthy: So that's a really good part of it to use. We're not just trying to sell something, sell a service and give you some products. We're actually giving you the [00:07:00] tools that you need to be successful in your lawn, regardless of what it is you're trying to do.

[00:07:04] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's funny, and that's a great point, because depending on the lawn, you might have a big iron deficiency, or your pH is way off, and you can throw all the nitrogen on it you want, you're just covering up those other problems.

[00:07:18] Eric Goranson: That are right there screaming at you, but you don't know until you do the test.

[00:07:22] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And a lot of the times you'd see this result, but, you wouldn't know if your P. H. locking out any higher, you know, A. Or phosphorus levels, for example, are a lot higher. So we do make sure that you have a full picture of what's going on so that you understand it.

[00:07:38] Craig Elworthy: And, in most cases, we can do a lot of this ourselves with just adjusting the products that we're spending the year on and on.

[00:07:46] Eric Goranson: Yeah, and that makes it easy. That makes it super easy, and you're gonna have the best looking lawn out there.

[00:07:53] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, that's what we try to do. It really is the easy button, right? You don't actually have to think about it too much.

[00:07:58] Craig Elworthy: There's a, a, a text, [00:08:00] text based service that we offer as well, which is going to give you real time as your seeding moves along. And as the weather unfolds, it'll give you updates on when to spray your products, when to not spray your products.

[00:08:15] Eric Goranson: One of the things I love about this too is it keeps you from really over fertilizing and that's some of the problems we see out there when that stuff's ending up on waterways and everything else out there is that sometimes fertilizer isn't the answer and I like that you guys balance that out.

[00:08:28] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, and actually it's, you're totally right about that. A lot of the times fertilizer isn't the answer, right? Like in, in the spring, for example. Your VAW is going to go through a natural flush on its own. You don't really actually need to do much fertilizing to it. Not a lot of people in the industry as a whole is geared towards towering the hummer that you gotta go out in the springtime and go and buy that big 50 pound valve of, uh, of synthetic fertilizer and build up a lot.

[00:08:55] Craig Elworthy: That's actually really not the best thing to do. You could be microdosing with [00:09:00] biostimulants, uh, which is what our plan essentially does. Get a much better effect and you could be, see, you could have a much year less impact on the environment around you. Right? You're not gonna have an excess of really your problems, nitrogen and phosphorus that are running on because you, you put it on you overly, right?

[00:09:20] Craig Elworthy: Even if you're on dive and times you overly and the staff is running off into the watershed and out, down spirit.

[00:09:27] Eric Goranson: Man, that is great. Craig. Thanks for coming on today. We're running outta time. How do people find you guys again?

[00:09:33] Craig Elworthy: Yeah, again, thanks for having me. I really appreciate being on. Uh, you can find us at getlawnbrite.

[00:09:38] Craig Elworthy: com.

[00:09:40] Eric Goranson: Thanks my friend. And guys, here's your answer to a greener and a healthier lawn. Round the house. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.[00:10:00]

[00:10:14] Chris Berry: What's up? This is Dixie Dania

[00:10:16] Intro: and Satchel from Steel Panther, and you are listening to Around the house with Eric G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should too.

[00:10:33] Eric Goranson: As people are planning out these outdoor projects, there is a product out there that I've seen that can change how you do that backyard cover. Doug from Skylift. Welcome to around the house. Thanks, Eric. Glad to be with you. Man, thanks for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it. You have come up with something innovative that eliminates a lot of those posts in your back patio up against the [00:11:00] house.

[00:11:00] Doug Lethin: That's right. We've come up with the Skylift hardware to show you how that works. Absolutely. Let's talk about it, brother. So, Skylift, after being a contractor for decades, came up with a product that is structural and the Skylift is installed on top of the exterior wall. Typical 2x4 double top plate. That wall is designed to carry a load down to the foundation, so the sky lift is very structural.

[00:11:32] Doug Lethin: And that's the intention of the sky lift is a structural element holding up an outdoor living project. When we look at this, there's 3 questions that typically come up. 1 is. Oh, no, you want me to put this through my roof. Which actually is very simple to understand roofing a difficult composition growth.

[00:11:54] Doug Lethin: Under this tab right here, 1 inch up. Are the stapler nails [00:12:00] holding this shingle down. Somebody's going to take a stiff, but I break the seal. Yeah, all those nails are stable and they're going to pull this off and out of the way. You can pull 1, 2, you're going to slide those out of the way. And then you can access the sheathing to cut a hole and save that flywheel.

[00:12:20] Doug Lethin: And now you're going to install the Skylift on top of the wall, put the plywood back in, and then use a flashing, flash that code proof flashing through the roof and put the shingles back on. Much easier than it sounds. That's one of those trust.

[00:12:39] Eric Goranson: You're listening to around the house show, talking with Doug from Skylift hardware.

[00:12:44] Eric Goranson: Let's get back to the program. Yeah, and that's a lot like what you'd see with a plumbing pipe coming up through there for your vent through the roof. It's a similar type of concept as far as how that seals around it, correct?

[00:12:55] Doug Lethin: This is the standard in roofing, sealing a riser, or [00:13:00] this is the principle the SkyLift uses.

[00:13:03] Doug Lethin: And 1 of the questions that people ask, where do I cut that hole? Let's say this was a level here, and I would hold the level out of my gutter or my fissure, measure back to the wall. Okay. It's the same measurement up here and there's my wall. So now I know which was to remove. I can cut my own use a level back here.

[00:13:26] Doug Lethin: A measurement up here that I told me. Remove that, install the SkyLift. The fasteners come with the SkyLift. Here we're showing our heavy duty SkyLift. We have quite a few other products I can show you in a moment here, but This is the basics of the SkyLift. The structural screw holding this down. Here we're showing an optional lateral stabilizer strap right here.

[00:13:55] Doug Lethin: This is an optional item, and this can be used for [00:14:00] Stabilizing the riser is me. Now, the other question, how tall is the sky lift? 1 wants to consider. When you're building a cover up here, and it's a covering material. What is the slope or the this cover? What kind of slope do I need for this cover material?

[00:14:19] Doug Lethin: Typical roofing wants a 3 inches to 12 inch rise to rough. Typical roofing shingles for the warranty to apply is a 3 12 pitch. Therefore, this wants to be a 3 12 pitch if I'm using, if I want the sky lift close to the roofing, this is an 18 inch sky lift, which puts the bottom of the beam about 12 inches above the roofing.

[00:14:46] Doug Lethin: This area under the roof to the top of the wall. Is 6 inches or less, and that's pretty much across the country. Now, let's say I open up the roof and hopes I've got to raise this. I can [00:15:00] always add another plate on top of this wall to

[00:15:03] Eric Goranson: help. Yeah, that makes sense, man. That makes sense. And it's super easy.

[00:15:06] Eric Goranson: And. This just eliminates having to put those crazy posts up against the edge of the soffit and put them right in the middle of your living space. Right?

[00:15:15] Doug Lethin: That's true. And other things that people try to do is they'll come up with. Attachments through the roofing, but once you put a volt through your roofing, you've voided your roofing warranty.

[00:15:28] Doug Lethin: Yeah, and you've just created a freeway for water at that point. That's right. Eventually that can lead. With the sky lift, you're using a roof flashing design for penetrating the roofing and you do not void your roofing warranty using a roof flashing. We are 30 year rough is still a 30 year rough when you're done with the sky lifts in.

[00:15:51] Eric Goranson: So, Doug, how many of those do you need across on a typical, on a typical patio cover that you're building out there? How far apart do you typically put those?

[00:15:59] Doug Lethin: We might [00:16:00] typically recommend every 8 foot on center with a minimum of a 4 by 8 feet. Because we know a 4 by 8 beam will span 8 foot day in and day out, no deflection, and that's got a lot of structural value.

[00:16:15] Doug Lethin: The other thing someone has to consider is, depending where they're located, what is their snow load? Because the snow load contributes to additional weight. Each sky lift is rated for 2, 500 pounds, but the snow load is greater than what the sky lifts can carry. You need to add additional sky lifts for that additional load.

[00:16:38] Doug Lethin: It's a mathematic equation principle. We always recommend somebody consult with your local. Engineer contractors lumberyard to get its specifics on the structure elements project.

[00:16:52] Eric Goranson: Perfect that's where that planning comes in and anytime you're building a big cover like that. Many times you got to be pulling those permits anyway, [00:17:00] so that engineer stamp is what you're going to want anyway.

[00:17:02] Eric Goranson: And this is just the easy button because. It's something that's already ready to go for

[00:17:07] Doug Lethin: engineers and architects recommend our product. We had buildings under the radar and our product. We like that, but we have several products to help the consumer determine which is the best option to get.

[00:17:20] Eric Goranson: That is awesome.

[00:17:21] Eric Goranson: So you've got basically something there for every situation. Whoever is building that, that new patio cover.

[00:17:28] Doug Lethin: That's it. We've got our pro designer risers. We call these risers. This product is structurally able for supporting a vertical wood post. Most people will stick a beam right in here and that puts it.

[00:17:43] Doug Lethin: Being within 6 inches of the roof, they like this product. Their standard duty. It's an inch and a half riser, got 4 fasteners holding this down, and then we have our. 18, 24s. We have [00:18:00] 30 and 30. These can be, we don't encourage that people to trim these risers down.

[00:18:06] Eric Goranson: Got it. That makes sense. So I guess the million dollar question is for these people out there.

[00:18:10] Eric Goranson: How do people find these?

[00:18:12] Doug Lethin: You can check with your local lumber yard. Skylifts can be ordered online. Skylifts can be obtained through your local roofing supply dealer. Skylifts are recognized throughout the Northwest as an above the roof attachment for patio covers and outdoor living projects.

[00:18:29] Eric Goranson: Doug, thanks for coming on today, man.

[00:18:31] Eric Goranson: I really appreciate it. I love what you're doing here. This is such a smart way for building that patio cover. I love it.

[00:18:38] Doug Lethin: Thank you,

[00:18:39] Eric Goranson: Eric. Hey,[00:19:00]

[00:19:06] Doug Lethin: this is Ron Keel, the metal cowboy from Keel, the Ron Keel Band and Steeler. We are rocking around the house

[00:19:14] Eric Goranson: with Eric G. When it comes to plumbing, one of my greatest friends is the number one expert in the country. Roger Wakefield, the expert plumber. Welcome back to Around the House, my friend.

[00:19:28] Roger Wakefield: Brother Eric, how are you

[00:19:30] Eric Goranson: doing, man?

[00:19:31] Eric Goranson: And good to see you're doing well. And you made it through your storms over there and you're in your studio. Number four or whatever it is just to get on the show today. I appreciate the effort.

[00:19:40] Roger Wakefield: I'm glad we were able to make this work.

[00:19:42] Eric Goranson: Thanks, man. I wanted to ask you, there's such confusion out in the marketplace for homeowners and even contractors out there about just using the right plumbing fittings for the project, because so many people walk into the home improvement store and go.

[00:19:58] Eric Goranson: Okay, that will [00:20:00] work and they really don't know the application.

[00:20:05] Roger Wakefield: What are your lines for them? Well, and here's what I like to tell people is I like to put in what was there most of the time. Now, if it's, if it's a water leak, something like that, say y'all have a big freeze, say it gets down colder than it's ever gotten longer than it's ever gotten.

[00:20:23] Roger Wakefield: And you're like, look, I need to put this together right now, just to stop a flood or to get water back on for this family. So I can go help somebody else. I understand using temporary fittings. And I think that a lot of these fittings are temporary. If you can put it on. And take it back off. To me, it's a temporary fitting.

[00:20:46] Roger Wakefield: If you can cut it apart and reuse it, it's a temporary fitting. But me, I look at, I love a solder joint. I love a braze joint. I love putting something together that I know is going to last. It's never going to be a problem. I'm [00:21:00] never going to have to come back

[00:21:01] Craig Elworthy: to it.

[00:21:02] Roger Wakefield: And I see people put these fittings, push to connect fittings, things like that together in areas they're never going to be able to get back to.

[00:21:09] Roger Wakefield: And I'm like, guys, that's just not the right thing to do.

[00:21:11] Eric Goranson: Especially when there's like O rings and things that are eventually are going to dry out and fail. And then you've got a hidden water leak.

[00:21:20] Roger Wakefield: And that the EPDM is what a lot of these are made of, which is great. But I've worked in industrial plants where we've had to come back and change those because they do fail.

[00:21:31] Roger Wakefield: And then my, the other thing is. The stainless steel, the, the, the pressure to squeeze it, or when you push it together, the teeth lock in and movement over the time is going to make that loosen up and possibly leak.

[00:21:45] Eric Goranson: Yeah. I've had them come off of a CPVC before and create. Tens of thousands of dollars of damage on job sites where they thought it was the right thing to do.

[00:21:54] Eric Goranson: And that was a licensed plumber that did it said, I'm going from CPVC to a PEX [00:22:00] product. It was installed correctly. It just slid right off the pipe and didn't grab ahold of that plastic.

[00:22:05] Roger Wakefield: And I've seen that the ones that really scare me. And Eric, I talked to a lot of plumbers every day. I've got plumbers that reach out to me and tell me their plumbing company will not let them make a solder joint.

[00:22:17] Roger Wakefield: Any, they're not even allowed to have a torch on their truck. And I'm like, are you joking? But that's the way they're being taught nowadays. Push to connect, expansion fittings, PEX press fittings. There's a lot of different opportunities out there. And I think a lot of these companies are doing it because it's pretty easy.

[00:22:36] Roger Wakefield: You could train a third grader how to push together those fittings. Snap, lock, puzzle. So they're doing that and they're training them to do that. And then they're cutting them loose out on the job. And that's all they know how to do. It's scary to me.

[00:22:48] Eric Goranson: You opened my eyes up when you did your test pressure tests on these fittings.

[00:22:54] Eric Goranson: And some things that I thought would be number one, weren't of course, the solder joint [00:23:00] just crushed it. Like you'd expect it to even some of the press connected fittings. I was like, Oh, that didn't do as well as I thought it would.

[00:23:09] Roger Wakefield: Yeah, and it's interesting to see, and they tend to do different on different materials.

[00:23:14] Roger Wakefield: Some of them may hold up pretty well on the copper. Some of them may hold up better on the pegs. But the good thing about it is, and remember, the pressures that we were blowing apart at were way over what you're ever going to have on city water. And we know that. And that's a lot of things that a lot of plumbers complain about.

[00:23:33] Roger Wakefield: They're like, Roger, the pressure is never going to reach that level. Okay. At the end of the day, I want my plumbing built with the very best product. And to me, the one that holds the most pressure that I know I'm not going to have to worry about if it's installed properly is copper line with a solder joint or a braze joint.

[00:23:56] Roger Wakefield: We don't braze that often. When we went and [00:24:00] tested the last test we did, we tested a braze joint versus a copper joint or a solder joint. And the copper busted on both of them. We couldn't even get the joints to blow apart. So that's telling me, look, this works pretty well.

[00:24:13] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And you know something, I think that does tell a story though.

[00:24:16] Eric Goranson: Cause what fails first, whatever fails first, typically is going to be the weaker, the connections. And. You were doing these in a perfect situation. It wasn't in some weird off angle that you usually see in construction, right? Or you're just, I got enough to make this work, to get this in there. And you're hoping you got this.

[00:24:35] Eric Goranson: You can't even get a mirror back behind that fitting, but you're like, ah, my experience says I got this soldered in correctly, but you had a perfect situation. And so it tells you what's the stronger of those. I think it still tells a great story of what's the best to use.

[00:24:50] Roger Wakefield: And we built that it's a stainless steel blast chamber.

[00:24:53] Roger Wakefield: We drilled a hole in it to make the penetration and put a bulkhead fitting in. So we can attach pretty much any [00:25:00] assembly that we want to that. And I think we built it about 18 inches by 24 inches. We put a half inch thick acrylic lid on it. Which is good because we've blown some stuff up in there. And I like it because we've got a gauge on the hydrostatic pump.

[00:25:17] Roger Wakefield: We also installed a digital gauge on the hose coming in. So we can double check our numbers to make sure things are right. And it is, it's a safe environment. We didn't just put it in there and say, look, let's blow it up and see if anybody gets hurt and then we'll find out how to protect people. So it is, it's a good installation.

[00:25:36] Roger Wakefield: And it is just testing what we're trying to test. Everything else we've got put together with stainless steel threaded joints. We know that's never going to rupture. We've got a thousand, a 10, 000 PSI hydrostatic pump and hose on that. So we've got a safe facility and apparatus to do the testing.

[00:25:56] Eric Goranson: You're listening to around the house show featuring Roger [00:26:00] Wakefield, the expert plumber.

[00:26:01] Eric Goranson: Now let's get back to the program. Yeah, that makes sense. I do have one more question before we go. And this comes to more of that drain waste vent stuff. Which do you prefer? Do you like the ABS or are you more of a PVC person?

[00:26:14] Roger Wakefield: What's funny is I think it depends on what part of the country you're in. In Texas, I grew up on PVC.

[00:26:21] Roger Wakefield: I remember, When PVC first came in, it was the early eighties when we started using it here in Garland, and they were still making us put cast iron underground. And I remember one of the inspectors telling me, he says, Garland will never use PVC. And it wasn't, but a few years later and they are using it.

[00:26:41] Roger Wakefield: And I guess they said they'd never use it underground, but now we're seeing so many areas where we're going under houses and replacing cast iron pipe. And that's one of the few times Eric, that I go in with a different product. Now, I don't, if I go into replace cast iron, [00:27:00] I go in now and replace it with PVC.

[00:27:02] Roger Wakefield: Just because we know that the. The life expectancy is so much more. And especially if we go in and do a complete re pipe, we want to try and bring the PVC up through the slab if it's possible. And if the homeowners are like, look, we don't want you to come to the house and open up the wall or anything like that.

[00:27:21] Roger Wakefield: We'll just literally cut it off. We'll come a couple inches below the slab, cut it off. Attached to it with a sheer band, and then we'll put anchors in, we'll put a standoff clamp on it and clamp it down. That way we know it's not going anywhere. I said, a standoff, we'll do a riser clamp and then pull two anchors and secure it to the slab.

[00:27:41] Roger Wakefield: That way we don't have any problems. I know that doesn't answer the ABS versus PVC, but I've only found two houses in Dallas in 44 years of plumbing. That had ABS and it was hard for me to get parts to fix them, but we were able to do it.

[00:27:59] Eric Goranson: Out on the [00:28:00] West coast. We are a huge ABS community out here as far as what we see, but fittings are so much and the pipe is so expensive compared to what it was a couple of years ago.

[00:28:09] Eric Goranson: So I think a lot of plumbers now are going that PVC fittings are third of the price. So I think that's been another thing that people are starting to look at. When it comes to job cost, and it's just like the push to connect fittings, when you're paying all that money for a single fitting, I get it for temporary.

[00:28:25] Eric Goranson: But if you're going to knock out a big project, cost plays a part of this.

[00:28:29] Roger Wakefield: I didn't think about it too. It's not just the cost of the fitting. That's where the push to connect fitting makes sense. If I can take two pieces of pot that are prepped and ready to go, and I can put a fitting and boom, press it together.

[00:28:42] Roger Wakefield: And that takes me five seconds, or I can flux it up. Flux up my fitting, put it together, take a torch, heat it up, solder it. The labor is going to take, say it's three minutes, say it's five minutes, anywhere between that, that's [00:29:00] where the push to connect starts to make sense. That's where PEX has done really well with expansion tools.

[00:29:05] Roger Wakefield: You can put them together faster than you can make a solder joint. So where you're maybe spending just a little bit more on the materials. Now you're spending quite a bit less on labor. And that's what makes it all worthwhile,

[00:29:18] Eric Goranson: man. That makes sense. Roger. Thanks for coming on the show today, brother. I really appreciate it.

[00:29:23] Eric Goranson: Where can people find you and get all your great information?

[00:29:26] Roger Wakefield: Man, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. Of course, they can go to YouTube and search plumbing or if they're in the trades and they want to find out how to get better at either getting in. Becoming a better tradesman, starting their own business or growing their own business.

[00:29:41] Roger Wakefield: We are releasing the Wakefield app. So they can go to www. wakefield. app and check it out for free.

[00:29:50] Eric Goranson: It is a great app, Roger. And thanks for coming on the show today, man. I really appreciate it. Can't wait till next time. Thank you, Eric. Round the house. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.[00:30:00]

[00:30:23] Eric Goranson: There is one guy I've been following for a number of years and he's even in the Pacific Northwest, Chris Berry, the Idaho painter paint life. Welcome to around the house. Northwest. My friend. Oh

[00:30:34] Chris Berry: man. I'm so glad to be here. This is awesome. So, um, I'm glad to talk to you. I love to talk to

[00:30:40] Eric Goranson: you. Thanks for coming on brother.

[00:30:41] Eric Goranson: Thanks for taking the time. You have been educating people in the trades homeowners for a number of years out there. I really appreciate what you're doing and showing the right way to do things.

[00:30:53] Chris Berry: Yeah, I've been, um, now on YouTube teaching and educating probably for 12 years now, got a [00:31:00] channel, paint life TV and teaching, do it yourselves and professional painters for many years and absolutely love what I do.

[00:31:07] Chris Berry: Love teaching and educating and helping people get their painting. Projects done a lot faster, not easier, really. Oh, yeah, that's super cool. And then

[00:31:16] Eric Goranson: I got to ask you, you know, we're coming into spring right now and you know, the weather is sketchy every other day. It seems because that's just the way it is in the spring.

[00:31:23] Eric Goranson: You got some great tips out there for people thinking about those exterior house painting projects, because I know everybody's itching to get outside and get some color.

[00:31:30] Chris Berry: Yeah, you know, it is. We've been bunched up inside as professional painters, doing the interior repaints. You know, all winter long, so it's been snow and it's been crazy.

[00:31:40] Chris Berry: And now we're all excited to get outside. And I do got some simple tips and tricks when it comes to exterior painting. And 1 of them, if you're a do it yourself, or even a professional painter. You know, if you're getting ready to do an exterior or just a simple little thing is, um, because we are, uh, it's [00:32:00] spraying now.

[00:32:00] Chris Berry: People are turning on their sprinklers and a lot of people don't think about this, but, you know, their sprinklers could be hitting the house. And the last thing you wanna do is, um, paint the exterior of your house and have your sprinklers hitting your house because, you know, water, our paint in itself is not, you know, water resistant per se, and it's just gonna end up, you know, um, damaging.

[00:32:20] Chris Berry: The paint, it's going to cause the paint to fail a lot faster. It could cause blistering and bubbling too. So I think it's something pretty common. We see sprinklers hitting houses all the time. So make sure do it yourself or have a sprinkler guy come out and check your sprinklers. Make sure they're not hitting the house.

[00:32:37] Chris Berry: And for 1 thing, Yeah. After you put a fresh coat of paint on it, if the sprinklers hit them right, hit the paint right away, it could get underneath there and could cause start causing water damage, dry, raw, all kinds of things, all kinds of problems. Another thing is people don't think about is their gutters, gutters and downspouts.

[00:32:55] Chris Berry: If you've got clogged gutters. Um, clogged, um, downspouts that could be [00:33:00] overspilling could be splashing on the, on the side of your house. Last thing you want to do is pay your house and have it damaged by water. So if you don't have gutters, you probably should get gutters on your house because it does protect the pain.

[00:33:12] Chris Berry: So it does protect the house.

[00:33:13] Eric Goranson: Oh, man, if you don't have gutters, all it has to do is that water comes running off that roof right there on the drip line. And then all of a sudden. All the landscape bark, dirt, whatever is all up in the front of the house. And that paint doesn't have a chance.

[00:33:25] Chris Berry: Yeah. So those are, you know, a couple of just simple things before you start painting.

[00:33:31] Chris Berry: Another thing, this is something that's pretty interesting. Not a lot of people know about this and this is kind of a pretty cool, um, little. Tip or hack, there's a product we've been using for years called bug juice, and it's an insecticide. You just actually add it to the paint and we started using it probably 15 years ago, or maybe 20 years ago.

[00:33:52] Chris Berry: And the last thing you want to do is paint your house, have it all freshly painted. And then, you know, a year later, have, um, where all your soffit [00:34:00] lights or our lights are in your house, have spider webs and bugs all around those lights. You know, it just kind of makes your house look aged, you know, pretty quick bug juice kills flying and crawling insects, you know, that land on your house.

[00:34:12] Chris Berry: It'll kill ants. It'll kill flies, mosquitoes, spiders, the product last in the paint. We've seen it last. Over five years, about five to seven years in your pain. It's an absolutely amazing product. You just add it to the paint while you're painting and it's going to kill bugs. It's absolutely amazing. It's an EPA, um, friendly product that you can use inside and outside.

[00:34:34] Chris Berry: Pretty cool stuff,

[00:34:36] Eric Goranson: man. That is awesome. I got to ask you one of the common, I don't know, it's a controversial subject out there. So I'm going to ask it anyway. What do you think of paint and primer in one?

[00:34:46] Chris Berry: You know, that's, that's a good question. And that's, um, I think it goes all the way back to, uh, bear pain.

[00:34:53] Chris Berry: Bear pain was, I think the, the first pain to ever create a pain primer one and bear pain was primarily a do [00:35:00] it yourself or pay, and it was do it yourself as we're creating this demand for a paint and primer one. Um, I think, you know, back then, you know, they're just really, um, it, Was and there hasn't been, you know, really a paint and primer 1.

[00:35:15] Chris Berry: I know I've used, um, you know, some recent products nowadays, you know, that are classified paint and primer 1s, um, on exterior, um, you know, houses and they are good products, but you're never going to. You know, have a situation where you really need to prime something and have a paint primer 1 be better than an actual primer.

[00:35:40] Chris Berry: You're dealing with bare wood. You're dealing with, um, you know, substrates that, you know, are failing primers are always going to be your best bets. Um, you know, if you have a house that is in good sound condition, that doesn't have any scraping, bare wood, any failing, You know, paint on chalky surfaces, [00:36:00] a paint primer 1, you know, can be okay, but as a professional, if there is areas that need to be a primer, I'm not going to be using a paint primer 1 as a primer.

[00:36:10] Chris Berry: I'm always going to turn to a primer 1st and then top coat it with a lifetime warranty paint that could be classified as a paint primer 1.

[00:36:21] Eric Goranson: Nice, man. That is great advice because yeah, it's, uh, it might cover a little better, but, uh, primer's just the way to go.

[00:36:27] Chris Berry: Yeah. And I think too, this is another thing when it comes to, um, a painting and you know, this is a tip, you know, for do it yourselfers and, you know, You know, professional painters understand this, you don't ever try to go cheap and paint, you know, paints are classified basically by the year of warranty.

[00:36:46] Chris Berry: So you could have like a 5 year warranty, 15 year warranty, 25 year warranty in a lifetime warranty, you know, almost my entire career. I've always used. Use lifetime warranty paints and there's a reason that you really do get what you pay [00:37:00] for. You know, lifetime warranty pain is it's going to be a lot less splatter.

[00:37:04] Chris Berry: You're spraying. It's going to be a lot less over spray. It's going to have superior coverage, which is actually going to end up paying for itself in the end and then it's going to actually last longer too. So, you're going to have to repaint your house, you know, in, um. You know, less time or more time.

[00:37:22] Chris Berry: Should I say still last longer using a lifetime warranty paint. So, you know, the headaches that come with, um, inferior paints are just not worth the money. So, you know, if I can, you know, suggest anything, you know, to do it yourself or, you know, try whatever company you're using, they all have grades of paint, I definitely would use a lifetime warranty paint.

[00:37:44] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Great advice. My experience in the past as well as. The most expensive mistakes I've made was buying cheap paint because I ended up having to buy more of it to cover and I would have saved the money if I had just bought a better quality paint and it's going to last longer. Yeah, I think

[00:37:58] Chris Berry: that that's the, the, the two [00:38:00] things is, um, it's so frustrating to have a paint drip and splatter everywhere in cheap, cheap paints, um, drip creating splatters everywhere that are just an absolute headache.

[00:38:11] Chris Berry: But when you set the coverage, you get. Way better coverage, uh, with the light with a lifetime warranty, and that just means you're just going to less coats. Typically, you know, um, 1 of the paints I experimented with this last summer was a product from bear and it was their top of the line, um, lifetime warranty paint dynasty.

[00:38:32] Chris Berry: Covered in 1 coat, it was absolutely amazing. There are certain colors, you know, they have in their line that are guaranteed 1 coat coverage paints. And typically, I would say there is no paint on the planet covers in 1 coat. I've never, even though they claim they have, but that paint I use it did actually cover in 1 coat is absolutely insane.

[00:38:52] Chris Berry: You know, um, you're only as good as your crap and, um, you know, I'm going to, I'll start off by talking about caulking [00:39:00] itself. And, you know, we caught a lot of stuff on the exterior of the house. We're going to be talking soft at this. We're going to be talking windows. We're going to be talking all the nail heads on the house and we're typically doing quite a bit of caulking and priming, but caulking You know, we'll just stick with this topic.

[00:39:18] Chris Berry: Um, caulking is like, you know, um, the paint itself is going to pay for itself. It's going to pay for, you know, the length of the product. It's going to last, you know, for years, a caulking is just like, you know, if you buy a 10 year warranty caulking or a 15 year warranty caulking, it's probably a crack.

[00:39:38] Chris Berry: It's not going to split. Um, or it's probably it's going to split from the surface, you know, pretty, pretty soon. And pretty quick. We've seen, you know, Inexpensive caulking on houses, you know, we've caught the next year. So, better caulking use products from power, like power tech to our big stretch. It bonds way better to the [00:40:00] 2 edges that it's, it's coming in contact with.

[00:40:03] Chris Berry: It has more flexibility. It stretches more. It doesn't dry out. And in the end, you know, your coffee is sealing your house from water. It's still in your house from air. It's still in your house from bugs. And if that coffee fails, you know, even before you're paying that a couple of years, it's just going to let all those elements and stuff in your house.

[00:40:23] Chris Berry: So, you know, I always use lifetime warranty coffee and sealants, just like use lifetime warranty paints.

[00:40:30] Eric Goranson: Nice man. The big stretch is what I switched over to a number of years ago. And that changed the game for coffee. Yeah, it's

[00:40:36] Chris Berry: a game changing sealant. It's, you know, uh, cheap sealants don't work cultural well, so they're hard to manipulate.

[00:40:43] Chris Berry: They're hard to get a smooth beat bead. They dry too fast. I mean, big stretch tools, amazing. And, um, the capabilities, the flex capabilities and the stretch capabilities of it is amazing. I've never had big stretch ever fail. On a job that I've ever used that I've ever [00:41:00] paid before.

[00:41:02] Eric Goranson: That says a lot brother.

[00:41:03] Eric Goranson: We're running out of time What's the best way to people to track you down because man you are educating the world out there in painting Yeah, you

[00:41:09] Chris Berry: know, I love to teach and educate, you know, um do it yourselfers and professional painters You can find um, I got 1700 videos on youtube about painting. My youtube channel is paint life tv You can find me teaching and educating on facebook.

[00:41:24] Chris Berry: I did the idaho painter Instagram, Idaho painter and Tick Tock. We do have a store, um, an online store and a retail store in Boise, Idaho. My online store is paintlifesupply. com, where we sell all the tools necessary to do all your interior and exterior painting.

[00:41:41] Eric Goranson: That's where I get my tools, brother. Thanks for coming on today.

[00:41:44] Eric Goranson: I appreciate the wisdom.

[00:41:45] Chris Berry: Man, it's been, um, awesome being here. I love to teach and educate. I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to Around

[00:41:52] Eric Goranson: the House