Episode 1346
Heavy Machinery and What is with the bad house flippers?
Jobsite safety around your projects is something we should all take seriously. We talk about Caroline's family friend who passed on the day of recording from a fatal accident when taking on a DIY project.
Then we dive into bad house flippers and what to watch for when you are purchasing a house. All this and MORE in this weeks first hour of Around the House Show!
We dedicate this episode to Eddie Heyworth, Rest in Peace
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Mentioned in this episode:
Baldwin Hardware
A new kind of decking and siding from Millboard
For more information about the latest in decking and cladding head to https://www.millboard.com/
Transcript
[00:00:26] Eric Goranson: I still wanted it and I still wanted it, but I knew about it. That's the key. I knew that I could fix it. So the problem that I have is like homes with basements that have been recently refinished. When you walk in, you think, oh, they just recently converted that basement as a house flip. That is my number one red flag.
[:[00:00:54] Eric Goranson: comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you [00:01:00] covered. This is around the house. Welcome to around the house with Eric G and Caroline B your one stop shop for home improvement every single week.
[:[00:01:29] Caroline Blazovsky: Hello everybody. Happy father's day weekend
[:[00:01:34] Eric Goranson: And let's, let's get this elephant outta the room, right outta the way here. And just kind of talk about it for a minute. You guys lost a dear old friend today and. It's something that we're changing the subject of the first two segments of the show today. And we're gonna dedicate this to Eddie Hayworth from Hayworth plumbing, who we're gonna talk job site safety today, cuz you guys lost a dear old friend and that's tough.[00:02:00]
[:[00:02:18] Caroline Blazovsky: And I think this tragedy that my family's gone through and friends have experienced, um, really brings light, that we all have to be so careful.
[:[00:02:38] Eric Goranson: Or even killed on job sites. And I'm gonna talk about job sites. Like it's your own home for all of our homeowners out there. It's the same thing. It's the same deal that happens either in your house or on a construction site. There are four major focus hazards out there that we need to talk about. Those are basically the major [00:03:00] ones that get ya.
[:[00:03:38] Eric Goranson: When you start putting heavy equipment into the hands of a homeowner around their house. Right?
[:[00:04:01] Caroline Blazovsky: His father had a plumbing company as well, and he simply went out to help someone put in a pat paper patio, which is not anything abnormal that Eric or
[:[00:04:20] Caroline Blazovsky: And it's a little surreal because Eric and I had just had a conversation the other day about him helping a friend out.
[:[00:04:45] Caroline Blazovsky: Buy the equipment while putting in the pav patio. And these are people who had experience doing this for, you know, he was 52 years old.
[:[00:05:13] Eric Goranson: He fell off a ladder while he was working on his house and he was working on his, his, and it almost took his life. We, we talked about that and you can go back on the podcast and listen to the way back machine, just, uh, search up Danny on that. But I, we really wanted to talk today to see if we could prevent some of these things from happening and give us some more awareness to this subject, because the last thing we wanna do, especially with father's day coming up here tomorrow, you know, this weekend that I wanted to make sure.
[:[00:06:02] Caroline Blazovsky: to die.
[:[00:06:20] Caroline Blazovsky: So it's scary. And it makes us realize that we have to be even more aware sometimes even when we think we're doing the right.
[:[00:06:56] Eric Goranson: Hmm, but interesting. That's the injuries and, and [00:07:00] I I'll tell you probably why in a second after this next nugget, however, the 65 plus age group had the highest rate of fatal injuries over double the rate of someone under 55 years. So it's interesting is, and I can say this from experience. I think if you look at how people were trained, In construction 30 years ago, safety was not the biggest thing, right?
[:[00:07:54] Eric Goranson: You know, the younger generation has grown up with a lot more safety equipment and safety devices than us [00:08:00] and even older. So it's something I think that should be, you know, just because you're a contractor, I'm just saying this to all my contractor, friends that are my age, just because you've been doing it one way for 30 years.
[:[00:08:22] Caroline Blazovsky: And it's just a reminder like Eddie had on safety gear when he was doing this right. So that you can take all the precautions and we just work in a dangerous industry.
[:[00:08:48] Eric Goranson: So what I wanna do, Caroline, in our next segment here, as we go out to break, this is not gonna be the entire seriousness of the show, but it's something serious we want to talk about.
[:[00:09:17] Eric Goranson: So let's, uh, we'll go out to break. We'll reset the clock here. We'll come back and then we'll talk about that. As soon as we return, because this is a serious subject that I think on this weekend, it serves a little bit more detail. We'll do that just as soon as around the house returns.
[:[00:09:46] Eric Goranson: in a, should I be loud? Be so hot. So many people with,[00:10:00]
[:[00:10:20] Eric Goranson: Our homeowner and job site safety, because, uh, we've dedicated this show today to Eddie Hayworth, from Hayworth plumbing who passed away here recently, uh, from a job site accident and Caroline, you and I have been really talking about how we can address some of these issues to make sure things like this don't happen to people cuz it's just so easily happens where something is going great during the day.
[:[00:10:50] Caroline Blazovsky: recap. I mean, this is happened in North Carolina and Charlotte and, um, you know, it was an accident where he wasn't even working. He was, you know, he had been in the industry like us for. [00:11:00] All of his life. And he went to help friends out, put a paver patio in and it turned tragic.
[:[00:11:28] Eric Goranson: Correct. One of 'em, which you brought up in our first segment, which is an important one, is it's very easy for anyone to run down to a home rental center, you know, any one of the tool rental centers and go rent a piece of heavy machinery.
[:[00:11:48] Eric Goranson: it. Yeah. There's and the problem is, is that on many job sites, before you jump in a skid steer or backhoe, they want you to be trained.
[:[00:12:22] Eric Goranson: And they're like, good luck. Don't damage it.
[:[00:12:27] Eric Goranson: yeah, I mean that, but that's, that's just the way it goes and whether it's a backhoe, a skid steer, a man lift a lift. Yep. Whatever. And off you go, and now you're, you're out there putting yourself in a position. Which can be very dangerous.
[:[00:13:11] Eric Goranson: And. As a homeowner, I was doing stuff and, and I had a farm. So I, I, I have a lot of hours on backhoes and, and tractors. So, but they didn't know that they didn't know any of my experience. Right. They just ran. I was putting this thing into positions that were dangerous. Were I never lost control of the situation, but one little mistake or one little slip of the machine.
[:[00:13:45] Caroline Blazovsky: and well, that brings us to two points. You, you know, how do you know that the safety, if you're renting something that the safety equipment's working properly. And the other thing too is when you are an experienced person and you do this all the time, sometimes [00:14:00] we get.
[:[00:14:16] Eric Goranson: And you can have so many other people kind of what I call contaminating the job site.
[:[00:14:43] Eric Goranson: Right. That's perfectly safe. But then they go tying off branches that are three or 400 pounds to it. And all of a sudden they've got branches. Tilting the lift over and now they're strapped into the lift. They've got their harness on cuz they're in the lift, tied off to the [00:15:00] lift. They're cutting tree branches off.
[:[00:15:23] Eric Goranson: There is a ladder app out there that you could put on your phone by NAOs and iOS, H mm-hmm . And these guys, you can put this ladder app on your phone and here's what's cool. You gotta put that extension ladder up to the house. And this is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a homeowner. And you don't think about it.
[:[00:15:51] Caroline Blazovsky: everybody's got a family member. I mean, we do that. Somebody's fallen off a ladder. It's not all that uncommon.
[:[00:15:59] Eric Goranson: I [00:16:00] mean, I was over helping my buddy and I'm not gonna use his name just for privacy reasons. And it was his buddy and now his, his late wife. And I'm up on his ladder. I'm helping him cut his Arba Vita bushes here like four years ago. And he goes, uh, be careful on that ladder. He's cursed. I go, what do you mean?
[:[00:16:46] Eric Goranson: Cuz you wanna have that right angle to placing that ladder up against the house. That way it doesn't tip back. When you go or slide out on the bottom, cuz that's kind of your two risks. You got three, [00:17:00] one year to get up there and you didn't get the angle big enough. So the base is too close to. The house that you're climbing on mm-hmm and then you could tilt backwards.
[:[00:17:26] Eric Goranson: And it always seems that you've got your hands full of something, or you're not aware anywhere near you can grab something. Mm-hmm.
[:[00:17:39] Caroline Blazovsky: You're done, you know, I, oh yeah. It's call
[:[00:18:08] Eric Goranson: It's free app. It's got the angle measuring tool, and I think it's a really good idea. And you can just place it on your, on your ladder. And it'll tell you if you're in a safe area. Hmm. Think about this. 500,000 people are treated each year for ladder related falls. Hey Caroline, when we come back, I wanted to talk about a different subject.
[:[00:18:58] Eric Goranson: Hey guys, you're listening to around [00:19:00] the house with Eric, Jean Caroline, B Zeke sky. And I'm gonna show you how to shred it out while you're building it up. Welcome back to the, around the house show where Carolina and I have been talking kind of safety around your house and job site and making sure that we're safe.
[:[00:19:25] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm glad we're gonna have a little levity, cuz this episode has been, you know, a little serious, but now we can go to a little levity with top gun. I still don't think it's as good as the first.
[:[00:19:54] Caroline Blazovsky: And where did you see this? So we were looking it up, right?
[:[00:20:04] Eric Goranson: state? No, it's like 10 minutes from my house. Oh, so it's down here? Yeah. It's 10 minutes from, you're in like a Mecca if I want to go see. Yeah. I, I can literally go over there.
[:[00:20:29] Caroline Blazovsky: walls, like of the, yeah. The entire sidewalls are the image.
[:[00:20:36] Eric Goranson: back now all the way. Yeah. So you're in a box where you've got a TV on the front and then on the sides, but here's, what's cool. And this is kind of the experience on the sides. It's not the farther back. It goes. The more it blurs out. Because it makes it feel like peripheral.
[:[00:21:17] Eric Goranson: Right? You were feeling like you were in the scene. See,
[:[00:21:33] Eric Goranson: number two. I, I, I think, I think top gun.
[:[00:21:51] Caroline Blazovsky: that's me two divergent opinions, audience, you go and see it and figure it out for yourself and let us know. [00:22:00]
[:[00:22:03] Eric Goranson: Immersive experience. Yeah. So that was cool. And I mean, I'm sure like the, the Jurassic part I'm, I'm trying to figure out in my head, how would you do this without spending like a hundred thousand dollars in your theater room? But I'm like, that is the coolest thing
[:[00:22:23] Eric Goranson: It's so much better than 3d to me. 3d was kind of cool. I watched the star war, the last, uh, 3d I watched, I watched, um, James Bond. Oh yeah. You watched
[:[00:22:38] Eric Goranson: it. It was, it was, it was cool.
[:[00:22:49] Caroline Blazovsky: cool. He showed me the pictures, cuz I've seen in like a, um, like a curve theater. So that I've been in. Yeah. But that's what I
[:[00:22:58] Eric Goranson: Yeah. IMAX, that's more IMAX,
[:[00:23:12] Eric Goranson: And for us, we were in the upper section of the theater kind of in the dead middle, not, not down by the railing, not, you know what I mean?
[:[00:23:39] Eric Goranson: And we've talked about this in previous, like midweek specials and stuff, but with interest rates blasting up and continuing to blast up. You're seeing the price of housing rocket through the roof and the money that you use to buy your home is costing you more and more correct? Mm-hmm [00:24:00] correct. So we were, you know, I was talking to my buddy, Sean, who's a great realtor here in my area.
[:[00:24:32] Eric Goranson: So this is not by any means a wide brush, but there are plenty of people that have watched a couple HD TV shows that thinks they're gonna be house flippers and are not doing our communities justice by flipping houses.
[:[00:24:57] Caroline Blazovsky: And they originally thought, oh, you know, we'll just fix it up. And [00:25:00] then they started fixing it up and they said, oh, we can really make a lot of money if we sell it. And these realtors really started approaching people who had just bought these houses and said, look, you can make another $300,000 if you, you know, put it back on the market.
[:[00:25:21] Eric Goranson: oh, I have, yeah. I have no problem with that at all. I, if you can go out and make money off of your investment by getting the most of it, I have zero issue with it.
[:[00:25:52] Eric Goranson: The roof didn't get maintained. The lawn barely got owed. We all know those, you know, it just, we all know those, right. The house was [00:26:00] maybe built in the sixties or the fifties. And, you know, it's, hadn't had a kitchen remodel in 40 years. That kind of house, right? Yes. You know, there might be a, you know, some asbestos flooring in the basement, you know, whatever, a wet basement and yeah.
[:[00:26:43] Eric Goranson: Maybe we should think about updating that. All right. Wow. We've got asbestos flooring down in the basement or mold. Oh, we're not just gonna blow and go and throw some Zinser over the top of it and, and paint it and hide it. We're actually gonna come in and have that Abed. We [00:27:00] don't have enough of those people doing those house rehabs out there.
[:[00:27:32] Eric Goranson: And I think that's part of our housing crisis. I'm out. There is some of this stuff. You know, people being misrepresented on this steps. I'm, I'm gonna throw a
[:[00:27:59] Caroline Blazovsky: And then [00:28:00] they're trying to unload. Right. And people buying without inspections. Mm-hmm so it's like it's on both sides of the coin. People don't wanna deal with an issue when you buy a home, there are going to be issues that are costly to fix, but have to be fixed. And so people are passing that buck on in whichever capacity they can, whether you're the flipper or you're the homeowner.
[:[00:28:23] Eric Goranson: So let's talk about that. When we come back, Caroline, let's jump out to break real quick. We come back, let's dive into that. I got some in interesting ideas that might help fix this, that could protect the homeowners, protect the buyers and, uh, you know, bring some honesty to that.
[:[00:28:52] Eric Goranson: threw my clothes.[00:29:00]
[:[00:29:33] Eric Goranson: And of course, all of our new podcast listeners. We see you. We too see that the numbers are just blowing through the roof. So we appreciate you. Thanks for finding the show. Thanks for tuning in. And if you're new to the show, make sure you catch us on our website, which is around the house. online.com. You can hover to Facebook and that is around the house show.
[:[00:30:12] Eric Goranson: You put up there in a safe environment. Yeah. We like
[:[00:30:23] Eric Goranson: course I like Instagram. Oh yeah. There's so much going on so much going on. So make sure you hit us on all of those.
[:[00:30:46] Eric Goranson: Nice. And I really appreciate them. But what happens is just like anything in any trade there's that group that's not mm-hmm and I, I see this on home and garden TV. I'll call 'em out on it. Sometimes I'm like, that's not the right way to fix that. [00:31:00] and that's where I have a problem with some of this stuff is where good money is being spent to hide a problem instead of fixing it versus repair the problem.
[:[00:31:33] Caroline Blazovsky: It's so simple to
[:[00:31:52] Eric Goranson: Yep. Possibly knowing that there's issues that would come up on inspection mm-hmm [00:32:00] and by pricing it low, they're gonna get a bidding battle going and no inspection. That's right. I mean, how many times have you seen that Caroline in your house
[:[00:32:13] Caroline Blazovsky: So, you know, I have a little better bird's eye on, you know, what's going on in a home so I can kind of make those. You know, acquiesce, if you will, and maybe get rid of one inspection, but keep environmental inspections like water and mold. But you know, if you ha know nothing about a home, you cannot make those blind decisions.
[:[00:32:40] Eric Goranson: know, it's funny, it's, it's one of those things and I think that's my best information I can give to any potential homeowner is do your best to take. That emotion out of it. Take a look at it as a business decision. Oh no.
[:[00:32:57] Caroline Blazovsky: they'll be like me and they'll never buy a house. Cause you guys, there [00:33:00] is no perfect home out there. And I'm the first one to tell you.
[:[00:33:10] Caroline Blazovsky: that's it, it had two bones
[:[00:33:13] Eric Goranson: It had the boats, it had an electrical panel that had been recalled that was gonna catch the house on fire. That was probably really close, but I knew about it. Right. And buying it. I knew that it went that electrical panel sucks. It's gonna have to come out. I knew I had a crack in the foundation in the back under the deck that was hidden, but the previous house inspector had crawled under there and found it.
[:[00:34:01] Eric Goranson: When you walk in, they like, oh, they just recently converted that basement as a house flip. That is my number one
[:[00:34:18] Eric Goranson: If that is the case, if I'm gonna buy that house, I dang well, better have pictures.
[:[00:34:32] Caroline Blazovsky: started. You know, my trick is I will never buy a house with a finished basement. You know that right. That's like, I know my pet peeve is like, I, I want an unfinished basement for many reasons.
[:[00:35:11] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm because if you've got 40 years, if you've got paneling, that's 40 years old down there, it's got a history, 50 years old down there. It's got a history of not being a wet basement. Correct. Now, all you're doing is conditioning or addressing humidity, and you're not dealing with something that might have four weeks ago have had 24 inches of water in that.
[:[00:35:38] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. But again, you're going back to bones, right? A lot of these homes, like, I mean, Eric and I, I mean, if I'm gonna buy a house, I prefer an older house because of. I feel better building materials. I like the fact that the bones are better. Like we're talking about, I feel like I can do what I want with it.
[:[00:36:10] Eric Goranson: And you also have to keep in mind your area when you're looking at a house, for instance, my area in Portland.
[:[00:36:40] Eric Goranson: Like it was hard dirt. Insane. And I have actually gone through a foundation wall to see daylight out the other side. Nice with just like a screwdriver and just pick it at it, not hammering at it, just picking at it. And so I wanna find a house that is one [00:37:00] that's old enough that maybe an engineer looked at it.
[:[00:37:21] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm , that's a big deal. Or if you have tornadoes or heavy wind storms, you wanna have that. So there's a, there's a lot of things that I think it's really good to know. And accept, you know, could be up there at our friends at, in w E U land in, you know, PA where they've got stone houses from, you know, the 16 hundreds.
[:[00:37:46] Caroline Blazovsky: find houses what you got to, where the original owners. And sometimes, you know, now it's really hard to do that as we progress through time, but sure. It's nice to have a history on a house and know what people did to it. I love having that homeowner where they can give me, we put the windows in this [00:38:00] year.
[:[00:38:11] Eric Goranson: car. Oh, those are like gems or buying a one owner old car that you are it's the gem or my house was cool in that for 20 years or so 15, it was a rental and the renter, the, the landlord did nothing to it, but the good news was that they didn't mess up anything either.
[:[00:38:50] Eric Goranson: And so that's one of those things that, uh, you know, get your inspections. I think that the market has changed enough that you should be able to sit there and say, I want a good home inspection. And if [00:39:00] that comes back with anything out there, that's funky. Get your expert to come take a look at it. Tread slowly.
[:[00:39:15] Caroline Blazovsky: everybody, uh, just the shout out. Rest in peace. Eddie Hayworth, uh, Charlotte, North Carolina, you will be greatly missed my friend.
[:[00:39:24] Eric Goranson: I'm Eric G and I'm Caroline B and you've been listening
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