Home Depot vs Amazon vs Professional Plumbing Fixtures

on and welcome guys welcome to the Home Run of vision DIY I'm Jeff thorman your host today we are talking about Plumbing fixtures we're talking about the difference between good stuff and junk we're talking about my recent experience I recently bought three of the faucets that were advertised to be the same product from uh Amazon from Home Depot and an online Plumbing supplier and what I did that for is because I'm a consumer advocate for you guys I want to know what's the difference are they the same product are they different today we're going to do some dramatic stuff we're going to cut some stuff open and find out what makes these products tick because I want to know why they were all selling at different prices and yeah so what we're going to do is we're going to learn about that and let's just start off with a quick little demonstration I got myself a white board set up today I want to share a little information because you know I've been doing this kind of talk for a while now we talk about how you can get a better deal but more importantly the market is changing we're getting new players in the market selling you guys stuff and so I wanted to get you up to speed what's going on in the marketplace so you understand the complexities and you can make an informed buying decision okay first of all we have something called MSRP in our business manufactured suggested retail price and if I want to be a distributor for something like a bathroom faucet I go to the company and say Hey I want to be a distributor they make me sign an agreement and they say hey you can't sell any cheaper than the MSRP right and you're allowed to get approval for a sale or two here and there but you've got to get all that in writing you've got to get an agreement because you can't sell it cheaper because all of our other Distributors have the same deal all right understand that relationship and when we call that is MSRP equals retail and if you're familiar with going out and shopping online for a good restaurant you'll get the one dollar sign two dollar sign three and four for the cost of the product retail is a two dollar sign scenario okay now the other scenario out there that's in that distributor Arrangement is you can sell it to contractors they're a unique buying group and that allows you to sell them with a one dollar sign you can give them a discount all right and that's a special buying group and that's has a special privilege now personally as a YouTube channel I like to see you guys as a special buying group we've been trying to have that conversation but gotten nowhere so far so just one of these days we'll start that all out and then there's this new thing called list price and that equals b s okay it's a three dollar sign situation so what we're going to talk about today is where did the list price come from how is it going to affect you and if you understand what that means then you aren't going to fall prey to what's going on online because you know we're at about almost 15 percent of all products are being bought online now that's up from just a couple years ago we were about eight to ten and that means that list price is our new Nemesis and you've got to be aware of it so that you don't fall prey to this and here we go so we have a manufacturer I don't care what the product is almost every company is doing it nowadays okay oh yeah let's make sure we can see what's going on here good point all right should we get a manufacturer and then make a product there's gonna be like 30 bucks okay they sell it to a distributor they sell at 50 maybe 60 right they're going to double their money now the manufacturer makes a product he makes a profit when he sells to the distributor now distributor in the world of Plumbing fixtures because let's keep it current would be something like in Canada we're talking Wolseley we'd be talking like um Ferguson in the United States all the different plumbing stores that you see around town they're Distributors okay and they have the opportunity to sell the contractors because they're a special buying group at a discounted price and they go from 50 to about 100 bucks they double their money they make a profit contractors sell it to you they double it and they make a profit okay they also can sell to retailers who are bound by MSRP rules and they can only sell it for 159. well okay now let's check this out so a manufacturer can sell two Distributors sell their contractor to sell to you or they can sell it to an a retailer who can sell to you or they can go online and sell it to you directly with a list price okay now I'm talking the specific distribution the product I'm talking today was listed as 325 dollars online as a listed price all right and the reason I wanted to bring that up is because that's the information that you need to understand today's presentation all right let's just get rid of this we'll pull it back in if it helps out later let's open up this because I'm going to share a screen in just a minute but not quite yet hi let's talk about the product that I bought foreign Adler faucet it's a kitchen faucet it's actually a nice product okay it's got a pull-down faucet this comes in Chrome and the idea here is is that Chrome is the cheapest metal you can get black you can get bronze you can get a brushed nickel but all those other options are more expensive so I like to buy Chrome because I'm cheap but I bought this one from Amazon okay and I wrote on the price here somewhere there we go 159 dollars plus tax okay now that seemed like a decent deal that's what it is I got in touch with Home Depot I said hey I ordered online I said Home Depot I want to mow an Adler faucet and I was curious to know is it the same product or is it a different product does Moen make some in China and some in somewhere else and someone somewhere else depending on the on the Marketplace Marketplace and guess what we got exactly the same box same code same um the the symbols on the back for the upcs okay all these things are exactly the same so that was interesting the difference is when I bought on Amazon because I'm a Prime member I got it the next day when I bought it through Home Depot it took five business days not terrible manage your expectations and then just for fun I checked out uh a major online Plumbing retailer gonna be polite and not share who they are because that was a huge disappointment and I ordered the same faucet now Home Depot and and Amazon were exactly the same price okay let's be fair that was awesome now Home Depot's price that they have on their website was thirty dollars more but they've got it discounted right now because they've got competition and they've got a rule they can't be undersold so they keep the prices where the competition is now this online retailer sold me this for 277. not 150. 277 and I thought surely if I'm paying that kind of money I'm expecting these two to be plastic and the other one's going to be brass I'm paying 277 for brass lo and behold got the same damn product now yep you betcha I got online and I asked them for a return slip right away this one I'm getting my money back all right these two are interesting because what we're going to do today is find out hey anything this metal is it all plastic is it all junk and just to make this even more interesting this thing here this one is 59 bucks it's a kitchen faucet even has a little spray handle okay we're gonna experiment we're gonna go and find out what is going on with these products are we buying junk does anybody sell quality anymore all right but before we do that let's have a little bit of fun exploring this concept of list price now I want to share my screen I want on the Moen Moen website moen.com okay pulled up the same faucet now check this out in the bottom left hand corner list price is 325. now what in the hell is 325 all about remember this Famous online Plumbing fixture place was like 277. they're they're charging 325 as a list price but right beneath it it says the web price was 149. great deal they look like the savior so now we got a manufacturer that's used to selling their product to a distributor for 50 bucks okay trying to sell something here for 149 direct to you and I checked it out I went through the process and they added 11 in shipping guess what it's the same price as Amazon and Home Depot mind blown so understand that in the current Marketplace these guys are bypassing this and this and this and going straight to you at the highest possible dollar that's in the marketplace and there's only one thing that can come from that everybody else is going to get squeezed out of the market we're going to have less selection less option and we're going to move closer and closer and closer and closer over time to the listed price because they're going to get rid of their competition all right it's scary what's going on now and it's not a I don't want to dump on mowing here I checked out American Standard the same thing they've got list price you can go and check out on the website all by yourself they're selling list price and then rebates looking like they're your savior or your best friend okay Delta's doing the same thing their shopping site isn't even up yet this is so brand new they have a shopping cart in the corner but they're still recommending where to go buy until that site is built everybody's moving in that direction okay now what we want to know is any of this junk any good because as a consumer you don't want to be buying plastic fixtures so we're going to open up and take a look why is this so cheap why is everybody selling exactly the same thing from the same company what are the differences okay so first of all here's the mowing it's a single handle it comes with a plate so if you have a four inch offset countertop we have three holes drilled this will cover the other holes if you only have one hole drilled you can go ahead and stick this bad boy in that single hole okay now these are faucet risers they come 3 8 okay now down here in the South where I'm in Florida right now some of the CPVC is actually not 3 8 it's half inch which means you're going to have to go out and spend another five bucks on this okay this is a female half inch and it goes a male 3 8 that'll make that adjustment for you not a big deal but these risers are long enough that you don't have to buy risers for it what a great deal great little Quick Connect system all right it comes with a metal plate okay and the weights blah blah and basically this is set up so that you can put a metal plate under here you can tighten it up with some screws and this is not going to move this is quality I like this product and then you've got this this is something that's being sold at the local hardware store yeah that's right it's a great option 59 bucks right okay now first of all that is not a four inch offset this is designed to be a kitchen faucet that well here's that before inch offset yes it is my bad my bad but look at this the attachment system is these plastic little rings you can press that up on your countertop okay now that doesn't work plastic under compression always fails so then one day you're in there and you're turning your faucet and the whole thing is moving on your countertop problem okay so then what you got to do is you got a silicone this to your countertop problem that looks like junk right what else do you not see in that box ER risers so it was 60 bucks but now you got to buy two of these now your fifty dollar sixty dollar faucet is 80 bucks well that's not such a good deal if it's not going to stay put and I don't have fossilizer is it any good what's this actually made of what do you say we find it [Applause] [Music] that's right today we're doing a live demonstration and we want to find out is this all plastic is there any metal in this whatsoever foreign [Music] looks like the faucet itself is made of some sort of an aluminum tin kind of alloy there's no real brass in that okay it didn't go gold on me so it's cheap so when you take a look at that cheap metal plus plastic Rings garbage now let's take a look at this Adler faucet and see if it's any better I am dying to know what am I paying for that a plumbing company wanted to sell almost 300 for this faucet board [Music] right away you can tell that took a lot longer to cut through all right let's have a look wow looks like some sort of a some sort of a stainless steel product but you know what the reason I cut this open is for this one reason you can look on the product literature you can read the whole box you can't tell what the heck you're buying nowhere does it say brass or steel or aluminum nowhere okay so remember if you're buying based on price you're going to pay what you're getting for okay you're gonna get what you're paying for sorry all right now the other thing about these is these cartridges in this situation there's a little set screw back here you can take up that set screw remove the handle use a wrench undo this the cartridge inside is actually replaceable so the Moen does have a lifetime warranty on all their cartridges okay so remember if you're doing copper plumbing remove the cartridge flush the system and then put it back in because you don't want to get a piece of copper or um the solder ball valve inside your cartridge it won't work and it'll be dripping okay if you do that they will replace it for you for your charge so half's optimon for that but I just wanted to show you like this is weighty this is metal that other thing was tin so when you pick up the box if it doesn't feel substantial grab the cheap one at the same time in the store when you're shopping and check it out all right okay now I'm not here to dump on anybody today but I wanted you to wanted you guys to know that there are differences in product quality out there okay and if you want really good quality you got to pay for it so let's just be real ah it's disappointing to know that we're creating a Marketplace where someone is making a 30 product selling it to you for 160 dollars and the goal is to bypass everybody in the middle and keep it as cheap quality as possible without any competition all right that's just where we're heading all right buyer beware now there are companies out there that manufacture brass stuff okay rehabel Pro makes brass stuff for bathroom faucets there's shower valves and everything they actually manufacture all their brass valves in Canada right and then the plastic fixtures that come from China big surprise the truth is quality is becoming something that is a thing of the past and if you're going to shop at retail stores that are in this mode here they're having to pay sell it at the same price as everybody else there's no margin left for them okay so let's just be smart about what we're doing and let's jump into the chat and see what the heck is going on okay uh wow okay we're gonna pop out the chat fantastic thank you very much now all right yeah right okay so let's talk uh if you got any questions guys the chat is wide open with everybody in the neighborhood we're doing a poll right now where do you usually buy your stuff Home Depot Amazon Wholesale Plumbing supplier or something else let us know love to get that information okay and and like think of this when you're shopping because you don't know what's in the box consider maybe shopping local go to a smaller Box Store go to like an ace or a Home Depot or a Home Hardware because they're twice as many of those as there are big box stores and the people that run those stores know their product got more information they're more likely to help you because they want to have you as a returning customer okay let's get a word of our simple buying habits and let's just spread your arms spread our wings a little bit ah the other thing you can do is you can go on Google if you find a product you like you can go on Google and you can type in the exact product and then hit the shopping button and it'll it'll it'll load up all of the different stores and all the different prices for the exact same product and then you can choose where to go from there all right all right cool I think I burned my thumb doing that that's awesome all right Nick hey cheers buddy appreciate the super chat if you got a question let me know we're going to jump into q a right now let's talk about Plumbing fixtures if you guys have got any questions if you want to know what my favorites are if you want to know what about warranty programs you know are they any good and first of all let me say moen's warranty program is amazing I'm not dumping on them their warranty is awesome compared to let's say flooring manufacturers that's another video okay holy cow let's not talk too much about that so where do you suggest we get reasonable quality stuff that won't fail in a year or two see this is great Mike that's a great question first of all nothing wrong with this faucet this is a good quality of good quality of a piece of Machinery it's got great faucet risers it's got great intelligence it's got a great ceramic cartridge okay and if you have a problem you can get a warranty on that in a lot of cases you can actually go down to your local Home Depot because they represent with Moen and they'll have the parts in a bin in that plumbing aisle so you can bring your old valve it'll have a code on it and then just give you the same thing and you can walk right out the store you don't have to go about the cash or nothing all right so feel free when it comes down to it guys you've got a shot by the brand so I know the brands are getting greedy they're trying to start their own shopping networks right resist that shop local so they don't get a monopoly on us not a bad idea and feel free to get something like a Moen like a Delta like an American Standard okay they kind of represent the beginning of the quality now there are options on the shelf for people who don't have the financial wherewithal to pay 150 bucks for a faucet and I appreciate that but if you have the ability to buy something that's worth 150 don't ever buy something worth 60 rating because you're going to get that plastic connection crap and you're going to go mad all right and you're going to get water getting in behind your countertop all right we got another Super Chat here we're going to say cheers to this guy he's just just throwing some love at us Tony appreciate it buddy you know hopefully this helps some people so let's just jump into some q a because uh there's a lot to talk about when it comes to Plumbing fixtures and I would love to be able to help you guys out what are the best Brands ah the best brands are not anything you're going to find at Home Depot or Lowe's or anywhere else you're going to want to go to the um Ferguson showrooms or the designer showrooms for the Best Brands okay the really really really good stuff it's not on sale at home now Moen and Delta and American Standard do have really good quality products but they're just not on the Shelf you got to go to their own sites or go to a designer store you can get a faucet with Smart Touch and all this other kind of stuff right it's like six 800 bucks okay and if you're going to get up to that price point make sure you're not buying something that you've never heard of before okay make sure they got a lifetime warranty or don't touch it all right fair enough yeah feeling better about that purchase I bet you are um Fister yeah I should have bought one because that really is just plastic my experience with Fister has not been good um it is really an entry-level Marketplace for people who just can't afford to spend good money on good quality okay and there's there's room for that it's just not where I start okay because I'm looking for return on my investment it's like if you're buying a shower system and the hose stays all kinked up okay that's not a quality hose it's plastic you want a metal hose that hangs nice right it's all about the look and the feel is Krauss a good brand okay hold on guys we're now going to go here I can't be on or suggesting brands for you tonight listening to what I'm going to say here um you get what you pay for there are a lot of Brands out there Kali is a good one cripes is a good one okay there's not such a thing as the Enemy of the State in the plumbing world all right it's all about what's the entry level what's the quality level and where are you going to be happy all right so it's features and benefits this is the way it works what have we got here ah okay yeah you know what Carl I get it the most motion sensor issue the touch control issue it's new technology they're working the bugs out it's a lot better than what is five years ago that's for sure and there's still room for improvement and they're working on it okay it's just like everything's moving in the right direction do you remember the old Pontiacs that used to be like 45 feet wide and 100 feet long they've improved since then give these guys time they will deliver a better product all right okay there's a good question is a bathroom fan essential and how hard is it to install uh no in most regions you're allowed to have a bathroom with no fan if you have a window that you can open to allow that moisture to leave the reality is most people don't open the window when they're having a shower because they lose all their privacy so it bathroom fan is a really really good idea all right I never sound more Canadian than what I say about really is that a thing about it's not a boat it's a boat all right um is Wayfair a good place to buy fixtures sure why not right all kinds of places to sell listen the Amazons the Wayfarers uh most online retailers are following the MSRP they can't go cheaper than that they're not allowed the contractor discount is where the money is so if you want a good value open up a cash account at one of the Distributors which is the wolseleys and the Fergusons okay you can even go to design studio and they'll give you a discount if you set up a cash account and get you closer to the the contractor price than the MSRP all right but Beware of the listed price trap because if they say well the list price is 325 and I can cut you a deal on for like 185. you feel like you're saving a lot of money but if the retail is 159 not 185 you've actually paid over overpaid for it so do your due diligence find out who else is supplying the products and make sure you're paying the right price because they're not making two different products they're not making a plastic version and a metal version right so why would you pay 277 on an online retailer when you can get it for 159 or 160 bucks from Amazon or Home Depot it doesn't make any sense cash account yeah not credit account you don't need any credit at all name phone number um your address boom you're signed up five minutes you get in the computer screen and then you can shop contractor pricing right that's all you need to know all right where do I usually buy my Plumbing fixtures from okay 65 Home Depot and I get it guys most of my community buys almost everything at Home Depot or Lowe's we'll call it the same for the purpose of a poll it's not a bad option it's not your best you have very limited selection there and it looks like there's a lot but in reality if you want to buy a bathroom faucet there's probably about 800 to 900 faucets on the market let me say that again probably about three to four hundred faucets on each major manufacturer's list on the market times 20 or 30 manufacturers okay so there's thousands of options when you deal with Home Depot or a Lowe's or another retailer they limit those options down to somebody that's giving them a volume discount to represent them on the Shelf okay because they're pushing their margin so if you if you if you want to be design focused you know um feel free to go and look online for different options okay uh go to the local design Studios check out what are the brands are out there there's a lot uh Corey wants to know what details on fixtures would you suggest for Quality like metal in what areas okay that's great here's the deal uh Corey every metal will wear exactly the same as far as lifespan in every scenario Chrome is the cheapest brushed nickel is the next one up all right and then there's the the brush there's the Venetian bronze and then the matte black is the most expensive they all do the same thing you open the valve and water comes up now if you're design focused you can pick whatever you want but then everything you buy in that room has to be the same metal unless you want to go that mixed metal phrase which is just lazy shopping and then your price goes up so you can easily buy two sinks a tub faucet Riser a shower system and spend an extra two thousand dollars in your bathroom just because you wanted to change the color of the metal which is trendy which comes and goes what doesn't come and go is the consistency of chrome so I always recommend stick with chrome save your money the water will still come out and you're going to be happy again all right ah can I install an under mount sink with formica laminate countertops and even if I can would recommend it okay brand new formica has the ability to do undermount sync and then that same sentence I said brand new which means not field tested we don't know if the people that are doing that install and that manufacturing have the same Integrity training and ability to provide something that's going to be waterproof I say don't do it all right at the end of the day if you're going to try something that's brand new you're the guinea pig okay that's just my advice what is the beginning of the price range for Quality bathroom faucet and tub shower fixtures that's really great okay so rehabel Pro in Canada I can get a shower system that has a thermostatic pressure balance valve plus a shower head and a shower wand it's a three function and I can get that for about 650 bucks with my commercial credit account online it sells about 11 1200 give or take my numbers are probably skewed because I've been down in Florida for a year and things are going through the roof but you get the idea and for me that's the beginning of quality when you get a solid brass fixture okay and that's really where it starts so give you an idea now you can spend up to about three million dollars for solid gold [Laughter] everything in between right but the majority of people are going to be in that um uh contractor pricing 650 to 2 000. all right and on the retail side twelve hundred to four thousand that's the majority of it ah aldamir says if I register my business account number with the government does that expire well there'll be a point where I can't use them no once you set up your tax number which is all that is you're just setting up a different tax number for the collection of HST or GST or whatever's going on down the stakes once you set that up that's that's your business entity and you it just runs forever okay whether or not it's profitable whether or not the person you're signing up your account with gives a rip about it most of the time when I set up a cash account nobody even asked me my business number they just want my name my number my address and that's it they open up a cash account there's no credit involved they don't care about anything else which is why this is so simple what trade shows you suggest for new quality products go to Vegas okay go to the build show we have uh kbis we have n the national Builder show is there at the same time uh it's either in Vegas or Orlando they've been moving back and forth depending but check out the kbis register with them okay and you can go to all the shows that are associated with that and depending where they are all right but kbis is one you want to recommend you sign up to get your registration through it's a great deal and then you can go and Shop all of the major brands and all the minor Brands and all the foreign Brands and check it out okay do I make house calls no can you imagine um should we do a meet up at the build show in Vegas next year that's a really great question is it in Vegas I'm pretty sure it is there you go just check it out because what we couldn't do is we could say hey the build Show's here and here and here we can set up a space we can do dinner we can maybe book a room or something if there's not people that interested in doing that then I'd be happy to meet you that'd be kind of fun all right uh cheers Tony and cheers all right uh so Stevo here wants to know what I think about heat pump water heaters looking at building a passive house wonder if the mechanical systems are field tested heat pump HIV except for the home allegedly does not need gas depends where you live but if you're in the North like me forget it you're going to be disappointed the air conditioning sucks and the heating is just under par 10 years ago was even worse now I'm not a big fan if somebody from one of these companies wants to reach out and prove to me that I'm wrong then go ahead and do so but if you're in the South they work effectively if you're in the middle of the United States they work effectively if you're in Vancouver it probably works just fine but where I'm from in Canada we have something called the Canadian Shield so we're covered in Granite we can't dig deep enough to make that work and our surface stuff is no good because in the winter the frosh goes down four feet so it's just not cutting the cake you know what I mean what products you want to see Jeff review next oh yeah really let's go maybe we should do some flooring stuff um turtle Turtle says should we do a meet-up at the build show in Vegas next year if I could afford to go I would say yes you know it's it's amazing because if you um if you want to go to Vegas usually the flights are not that bad and there is a old school uh Hotel what's that called the gold nugget really affordable rates seriously I went there one night couldn't believe it it kind of smelled like 1950 but there's nothing wrong with that right it's still a hotel in Vegas baby and uh nothing wrong with it all right Joe says here we go he's got a uh small stairs in 1957s eight and a half tread eight and a half fries 30th wide pine wood safety reasons is there a particular wood finish that you would give the most traction on the steps carpet pads grip tape blah blah blah blah yeah honestly in that scenario if you're worried about your traction it probably means you got kids going on with that right or even elderly parents or something you want to stay as as far away from semi-gloss as you can okay go towards the matte finish and you are allowed to do the first coat and throw in a little silica sand and then do another coat or two after that and that'll give you traction all right cheers ah [Laughter] there's even 50 people that would want to meet me in Vegas next year that is funny the Luxor and Excalibur have reasonably priced usually yeah I know everything on the south end of the strip is better price um and the Delano Suites man that is a really great deal right so don't be afraid to check that one out all right um we got a question here Sheila wants to know our on-demand solar powered hot water heater is okay well as long as the sun is shining it probably works okay but I would suggest if you want on-demand hot water then go with the gas if it's at all possible or just get yourself a tank don't be part of the experiment everybody's trying to figure things out kind of like back in the 1960s and 70s before we had a National Building Code in the United States everybody's experimenting everybody's throwing spaghetti on a wall to see what sticks okay 20 years of experimenting resulted in a lot of failures and a lot of disappointed customers so whenever something new comes down the pipe chill out wait a few years let the customer reviews come in before you become part of the experiment nothing wrong with it I mean unless you only got five years left and you really really want to have that product it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me all right uh as best as experimenting um oh here we go we're doing the kitchen floor have a 5 8 subfloor 12 inch on Center joist adding tile with ditra do I need to add more plywood okay 12 inch on Center joist is one thing but at least you want a two by eight if you're 12 inch on Center with no span longer than 12 feet if it's 12 inch on Center and you got a span longer than 12 feet it's got to be a two by ten and I don't care what the books say there's too much deflection on 2x8 floor joists even if they're close together okay so uh no you don't need plywood with ditra to confirm it check the thickness of your joist and then confirm with the ditra handbook because they've got their own rules uh Jeff's going rogue on the chat yeah well you know these things happen um I'm pretty sure Matt because he's in Ottawa Erickson Ottawa Matt's the one helping me out with this that if I'm in the Stream yard Eric is going to be putting questions up for me instead of just reading the pop-out chat and that might get rid of a lot of the confusion okay Eric so we're back in we're back in letting you drive the question with the questions on the screen let's see if that works up right here Mike says where does IKEA stack up with other big box stores for plumbing fixtures Etc right that's a great question Mike um I actually have never been disappointed with an Ikea product yet they're not the greatest product out there but they're pretty reasonable and their appliances seem to work out okay uh their their bathroom faucets and stuff seem to be just fine I haven't had any issues with them if you've got different experiences let us know in the chat but I'm actually pretty cool with them I thought their bathroom faucets and stuff were actually pretty darn good all right let's see what else we got here ah oh here we go what are your thoughts on interior dense pack insulation versus exterior EPS or Rockwell insulation located in Calgary Alberta okay um when it comes to residential construction if you're going to insulate the outside of your house that's fine but you've got to insulate all the way to the bottom of your foundation because you want a thermal break if you're not going to do that don't waste your money going halfway okay insulate the interior that's all the older your house the less you want to try to do new trends in building construction because the other elements of your house aren't built the same way all right and if you want to trench your entire basement just so that you can get that insulation all the way down to your footing that's a twenty thousand dollar expense or a long day and a half with a shovel so um try to try to reduce the idea of saying hey I've got an older house and I want to modernize my thermal technology on the outside that's a very expensive way to upgrade your house okay if you want to do that build yourself a new house because remember less than one percent of all the homes built in this world have all this new technology it's shown everywhere but it represents almost zero of the homes that are built so you're not being left in the dust okay you're just not part of the grand experiment so there's nothing wrong that big building code hasn't really changed much since 1974. so we still build exactly the same OSB exterior house wrap we don't even tape things up and seal things up the way we could or should even Tyvek has a better way to finish the wall than what people are using because it's not of the code so try to resist the temptation to get too extreme is what I'm saying all right let's do another question well I got a drink uh Irene says the best coating for the cement exterior of a 1979 house in Riverview New Brunswick small crack on the corner where water pool but now has been diverted so if you've got a crack in your purging it's called purging okay it is a exterior finish that goes over top of your concrete foundation we actually have a video um I think just like the top five things you can do at the outside of your house and it starts off with the purging you can actually watch that video The Secret is keeping the purging wet while it cures Nobody Does it that's why it cracks don't blame yourself okay the whole industry lets you down almost everybody who does purging in the entire world fails to read the instructions and actually put plastic over it to trap the moisture because it is a Portland cement product that the longer it stays wet the harder it gets the more crack resistant it is but nobody covers it up it's one of the failures in business construction and home construction sorry how do I seal in and around a junction box on an exterior wall to stop air leaks can I use yellow spray foam also what to do for the inside holes okay exterior junction boxes the only place that is leaking is where the wire is going through the ball okay and you don't want to use spray foam in that situation what you want to use is a caulking gun with an exterior uh it's the black goop okay it is um uh acoustic sorry I had a brain fart there all right get the cocking gun out pull the plug turn off the breaker first and where the wire is going through your your little hole in the wall just filler full okay push it right in there and that'll air seal it and that'll that'll set you up so you don't have to do it from the back side and that'll be fine all right it'll uh it'll fill the Gap just as well as as the spray foam but it also doesn't dry so then you can push and push and push and push and push and it'll just keep on filling versus the spray foam it'll expand and it res it'll keep the new foam from filling other gaps and cracks so it does a better job in my opinion all right we got another Super Chat here uh Solomon has a eight foot eight High ceilings in the bathroom built in 2022 eight feet high shower curtain that's abnormal the shower curtain alone the whole bathroom sweats when I take a shower do you know why well the whole bathroom is sweating when you take a shower you obviously don't have a good enough fan it might not be connected properly or maybe it doesn't have an exhaust point like all these things can happen or they've installed the damper upside down so when the fan turns on the damper is just blown shut okay you're obviously not getting your moisture so what you can do is you can go and check out and see if your fan is actually pulling okay turn the fan on take some toilet paper and hold it up against the underside of the grate and if it holds it in place then it's pulling air if it falls down it's installed incorrectly you can get that fixed cheers buddy all right uh we got a super chat from Brian Seattle area upstairs HVAC is down waiting on the manufacturer to fix it need to get going on flooring and we're getting three quarter Oak do I need to wait for HVAC or is it okay to get flooring and move forward you put the brakes on your flooring right now okay we are summertime we've got humidity and you've got heat and you got no control over your environment and it changes every day and every night which means you have not climatized your wood you can't climatize unless it's the same climate for 48 hours that's why you've got to wait okay I know you're probably frustrated and you want to get moving forward but if you move forward without climatized wood in a climate controlled environment you're going to have a disaster one way or the other okay don't do that to yourself be patient and if there's any kind of a warranty issue that's going on here people have commercial liability insurance for a reason take a look and see is there anything else that they can get from these guys because they're screwing up your job Ah Holy Cow yeah appreciate the advice Jeff 1950s Bungalow looking too expensive to renovate so looking at a new build and thinking about the passive house concept all right if you're worried about something that's too expensive to renovate then you just keep on looking at passive house Concepts because those are too expensive to build holy cow you give me a 1950s Bungalow anywhere in North America and I can renovate that sucker and turn a profit just saying it ain't about the money all right nothing wrong with 1950s hell 1950s they even got trust proof okay so you can just go in there and cut all the nails grab a crane mounted the roof lift it up and you can add another foot or two to the walls and set the roof right back down on top of it again if you want to that's affordable a passive house is not affordable all you're doing when you build a passive house is trading off future energy energy costs for today's expenses and in my world that is silly because I'll tell you what today's money is taxed pretty damn low compared to tomorrow's taxes so build cheap today and don't worry about it all right my goodness passive houses another building experiment gone wrong if you ask me man oh man oh man I mean let's just be honest here if you build a passive house you're going to throw another hundred thousand dollars into the building cost to save one or two thousand dollars a year in energy what are you gonna live to be 200 it doesn't make any sense all right I want to do a curbless shower on a new build floor joists are 12 inches uh tji three quarter inch OSB subpler how should I go about adding strong enough blocking to the TGI support the subfloor well if you're in 12 inch with a three-quarter subfloor you don't need any additional you're fine now if you're going to do curbless shower then what you have to do is you have to go and add extra support in that TGI um what they're talking about is this this is actually really interesting so we'll take a second to draw this out all right and it's a that's your choice okay okay and what this is this is OSB this part here all right and there's basically a two by three and and when you make a whole floor joist that way okay it's actually pretty darn strong all right and the way that you fix this to add the wood because you can't you're gonna have oh your your plywood across the top right what you got to do is you got to double block underneath so what you do is use construction adhesive and you put in a piece of two by four across here like this all right and you use PL Premium peel premium and a screw three inch screw and that's how you go between the two joists okay now you've still got your one and a half inch here you're gonna go three quarter subfloor right so the way you can go through there from there is you can take a one by three on top of that on each side or one by two now that gives you three quarter and you add another three quarter here so now you got a three quarter flush with your joists and then your three quarter on top and you're good to go cheers just make sure you do it in stages so you got your construction adhesive can dry and you have those cross braces every 16 inches okay and that'll be more than enough with an extra screw in it once it's all set up you let that dry overnight and then you put on your plywood afterwards okay and you'll be golden all right cheers I have a 1900 home that one wall of the wood siding was gone I want to put a new wood siding do I start from the bottom or up top down with putting the siding in the house okay here's another great opportunity to draw I love my little drawings wood siding on a wall usually comes in one thickness it doesn't come in wedges okay and so what you do is you start with a small piece like this and then the next piece starts here and it goes installed like that and like this okay and if they come in wedges it makes it easier but what you want to do is you want to cover your whole wall and tie back okay there's the spelling it's a house wrap you can staple it on you can tape the joints you can seal up your wall and then you can install your wood over top of that and you're going to be golden and that new well will be better than the old ones guaranteed because back in the 1900s they didn't have Tyvek you'll be lucky to even have tar paper or maybe maybe if you're really lucky they put um wallpaper inside the joist cavity in the house and then that was it for air sealing unbelievable all right [Laughter] how are we doing hey we got 13 minutes left anybody else got a really interesting question um Joe thoughts on replacing a seven-year-old water heater tank with a tankless option gas should I do interior or exterior living high altitude so very cold always interior never heat something that's going to be exposed to cold weather it's going to disappoint all right so get it back inside and they even have smaller units you can go in the actual room okay you don't have to have some big monstrosity right so consider that uh they were a problem not too long ago but we've sorted out all the Kinks the only issue with those units is sometimes they're really hard to get parts especially in the last couple years so check with your installation guy get a recommendation for a company that's actually supplying parts for maintenance if you're going to need them because if you lose that then they're waiting two months you got no hot water for months and that can be an issue okay a lot of these companies haven't supplied the industry with parts for service they just get the product out the door so make sure you talk to your HVAC guy and you make him kind of semi-accountable for the recommendation of which way to go cheers all right uh jabroni is 80 psi too high for water pressure um if you're in a residential scenario that's that's on that's abnormal 50 to 60 is that is normal so if you're 80 I'm not going to say it's a problem but when you wash your hands you're going to be wearing the water right so yeah it's abnormal I wouldn't know really how to turn that down now if you're on a well you can easily adjust your well pump and reduce that okay but if you're on City water pressure I wouldn't know how to turn guys if there's a plumber out there and you got an answer for how to turn down the water pressure on a City Line That's abnormally strong like that maybe there's some sort of a relief valve they can put on the main line to reduce the pressure I'm not even sure wow oh my goodness um Joe wants to know the trim after or before painting walls and trim okay it's okay to do it before or after the first coat but never never never is the last coat because it always goes gray and if your trim is white and you've got a gray cocky line and then you've got a color on the wall your house is going to look like junk and the dirt that's in the air you know that lint that builds up on your furnace filter it embeds itself in that Caulking and it always looks filthy and that's what you get when the home construction filthy caulking because they do it last the last guy's in there they have a van cocking our us basically right they show up they do all the silicone they do all the acrylic they do it they just the house no no more Shadows everything's pretty and a new car smell and it's it's the worst construction technology out there always always paint your cocking at least with the second coat so that you never get that dirty line so then all you got to do is vacuum your baseboards everything's always clean for a hundred years all right whoo all right we got it just about 10 minutes left I'm gonna put this down I keep on clicking with it nervous twitch or something going on Mark is asking me about should I tighten up a home without air to air Exchange you know there's a really interesting concept here when when you want to do uh air sealing of your house you still need fresh air right or you die like how how solid you want to seal it up in the building code we have a rule that if you have more than five bedrooms you've got to have an air exchanger because there's just too much CO2 from too many people sleeping in that house so if you have a three bedroom upstairs and a two bedroom unit and a basement for instance like a lot of people do you've got to add the HRV unit at the end of the day it all comes down to quality of life so if you have a newer house and you want to air seal it so you can control your thermal distribution now you've got to bring in that fresh air or you're seriously putting yourself in a health risk like you don't want to go to sleep and not wake up because you ran out of oxygen like all right it's not going to be that dramatic but you will get stupid okay you're gonna deprive your brain of oxygen you'll get stupid Maureen welcome to the membership cheers all right we got a question from Pierre here what is the best flooring stone form versus LBT versus SPC oh God I had questions like that why don't you have laminate in there as an option it all depends on what you're putting it in and what's the what's the desired use what's the lifespan I mean are you design based budget based do you have pets no pets kids no kids indoors Outdoors sunroom yes no there's so many things that going into picking and flooring I can't just say this is the best if you want to know what the best flooring in the world is porcelain and Hardwood everything else is a manufactured copycat of those two amazing floors now we're going to bust some bubbles all right now new to the channel new to DIY I love the content do you have a video that could help me figure out if a wall is load bearing no I don't have a video to help you figure that out and there's a reason for that because there are too many factors that go into it and I could do a video about a scenario in a house and that would not apply to your scenario in your house okay what you got to do is if you want to know if a wall is load bearing because you want to remove it that removal of a wall concept comes with changing your electrical changing your flooring changing your ceiling you have a massive expense okay you're already invested in probably eight to ten thousand dollars of material even as a diy-er tear the drywall off call a structural engineer pay the thousand bucks have them come up to the site and tell you if it's load bearing for the love of God people if you're going to put that kind of money into a house get a professional to tell you if you can rip it out but just take the drywall off first because you're already committed to doing all that work right so you remove the drywall on the wall take the first foot or so off the ceiling on each side so they can get up there with a flashlight and inspect boom boom boom and they're going to say yeah you're good rip her out or they'll say whoa we got to engineer something for you here are you still committed to this project at that point you're gonna say maybe I'm not committed and you're just going to repair dry well it's just drywall it's just drywall call the guys okay they need work too all right Josh says currently we have an air recirculating above the stove microwave on the wall shared by the garage okay is it a DIY project add event through the garage and out the other side approximately 25 feet wow um yes you can do it with DIY no you can't do without a permit because you're breaking your fire separation and your carbon monoxide containment when you break through that wall okay so because you've got two major issues there that are dealing with safety you've got to get a building permit and you can't park your car in that garage while you're doing that work all right that's all everything is DIY almost every jurisdiction the rules allow homeowners to renovate their own houses but you do got to get a permit and they just want to make sure you're doing it safe not for you for the next guy all right you can risk life and let them all you want but it's when you sell that house the next guy that's the one they're trying to protect okay so consider that cheers Allison thanks for the Super Chat there appreciate it we got a 1957 home do most late 1950s tubs have a flange need to replace the backer board and get a tub surround that is a really great question Allison actually my experience everything from the 1930s has a built-in flange it's going to be Steel and it'll have a little curve and it's about a eighth to a quarter inch thick and the wall is usually much thicker closer to half to three or close to five eighths so yes it'll have a flange and we replace the backer board we're going to draw for you Allison this is fun I'll draw nice and big because I don't have anybody to zoom it in all right here's your your tile flange here's your tub okay this is the stud and what you do is you bring your backer board to here now usually this Gap is only about uh three quarters to one inch okay and what you do is you bring your your backer board to here and then when you're ready to get prepped up you just fill this with cement okay and some mesh tape and it creates a solid surface and then what you do with your backer board is you can roll on a thin layer of Red Guard right down to here okay and you can put in a waterproofing membrane right down to the tub and you are good as gold and even if there's a weak spot here and it leaks it hits that tile flange and it drains back into the tub and that's why we have those and you're gonna be good to go all right cheers another DIY in the making right there that's awesome all right uh I love this guy's handle you can call me dude okay I'm running electricity to a shed about 100 feet from the house with pbu suffice for buried conduit I'm sure to look at some of the higher performance conduits check with your local building code honestly call your electrical Authority and say hey can I use this product or not a lot of times I get questions like this for people who've got material laying around and want to know all right I'm not going to say yes or no because there's different different zones so always check your local building code people at the building office they're not your enemy either a friend and besides you need a permit so if you put in the wrong stuff and you when you get inspected when you get inspected not if when you get inspected if you use the wrong stuff you did all the work for nothing and that'll be Madden so that's the right way to ask that question is from the people who are going to inspect you and then you'll never get the wrong information all right cheers we got three minutes let's do uh let's do rapid fire because uh you know my brother's got a birthday tonight I gotta go for dinner with them so I can't stay long tonight Max she's got two bathrooms back to back one gas fencing going through the roof the other doesn't can I add ventilation in the two bathrooms by tapping into the existing vent okay so you're actually wanting to put two bathroom vents on the same vent yes you can but you got to buy a two in one damper system so that you don't get back draft into the other room no sense putting a fan on when you make a stinky in one room just to throw all that stink in the other room and if you don't have the proper dampers then you're going to have that problem it's going to drive you nuts it also means that whatever bathroom is used the most is putting all that moisture in the other bathroom and that one's going to suffer all right because it's not going to exhaust so cheers Joe back to the venting question no vent in our kitchen behind the oven wall is an old fireplace can I vent through the fireplace or just get a hood that vents in place yes if the hole is big enough to put in the six inch or is it eight oh check your local code I the fireplace might be big enough to put in an actual um diameter of the pipe you need for Hood fans in the kitchen nowadays I think it's up to eight inch now Okay so man my brain is almost fried if you can stick an eight inch pipe in that okay chimney then you can use it if you can't venting in circulation is still an option it's just not a great one cheers next built a 22 foot by 40 foot carport attached to a cinder block house last year all fun and games until they won it completely weather proof Tony weatherproof simply means wind driven rain does not get into the studs so all you've got to do is put a Tyvek house wrap on okay and then where it meets up with the cinder block use an acoustic sealant which never dries it'll make it a weather seal in that corner and you should get approved my friend no problem whatsoever all right if you have any problem with that then get into our Forum because I'm pretty sure you joined membership today if you didn't join it it's five bucks you can get in the Forum send me your questions and your pictures and I can help you diagnose the solution and you can even send me your reports okay you're getting from the inspector and I can help you get through that buddy cheers and six o'clock last question we're finishing my basement I've got existing Supply and return runs for HVAC for the upstairs going through my floor joists is it possible to tie into the existing Supply runs to feed the bay cement no you don't want to use existing runs to feed the basement because you're going to be splitting the air and you're going to put performance in the basement and the runs you're stealing from you got to go back to the trunk line okay now your basement should have air from the trunk line already so I'm not sure why we have to go through all of that but if you want to add additional runs to go to the floor you can just cancel out another one of the runs in the room because you want to have a run for every 300 square feet from the trunk okay that's the quickest way to answer that question in a hurry Zach appreciate it um for everybody else who's got questions consider joining our membership okay yeah I go in there almost every day and I spend some time answering questions looking at your pictures and researching on the internet because it helps me to learn new products and Technologies the more problems I help you solve the smarter I get the more I can do stuff like this here we are all right so thanks everybody for joining us remember you get what you pay for don't buy junk and if you want to know if it's junk cut it in half cheers to the next time

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 267,125

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Id: vXIyzvaokko

Length: 61min 28sec (3688 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023