My favorite interivews of 2023 Part 1

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[00:00:05] Eric Goranson: around the house. Hey guys, Eric G from around the house. We have a great show to give you today and it's going to be my favorite interviews of 2023, the movers, the shakers, the people that had something to say, and we'll be doing a new interview, every single segment. So each hour, that's four of them.

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[00:00:46] Eric Goranson: When it comes

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[00:00:49] Eric Goranson: there is a

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[00:00:51] Eric Goranson: We've Got You Coming

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[00:00:56] Eric Goranson: Welcome to Around the House show. This is where we talk about everything. about your home every [00:01:00] single week. Thanks for joining us today. I'm going to buddy on here that we have been talking about this for, I don't know how many years we've seen him out there as mechanical hub.

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[00:01:18] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: house, my friend. Thank you for having me. This is going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it. Man, this is going to be

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[00:01:27] Eric Goranson: And I just absolutely love that. What's new out there, brother. I mean, you're doing everything.

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[00:01:44] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: And it just seems like. Finally, you know, it's really paid off spending all that time posting those dumb videos or memes and things like that. And just sharing information to whoever wants to pay attention, I guess.

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[00:02:03] Eric Goranson: And. Or I see your crew there and I'm like, man, he's got people. How cool is

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[00:02:34] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: An audience that we built up and yeah, there's kind of a little tiny crew, like I'd call it that.

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[00:02:56] Eric Goranson: You guys have a. A good size production going for even the [00:03:00] simple stuff.

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[00:03:16] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: And as we expand and we look at what we can do, what we, how we can share information. You know, everything we produce really is the intended for like the, the professional side of things, but you know, we're ignoring an entire audience that, you know, has potential to, that we could possibly create a space with like DIY and sharing, although there's a lot of crossover on, you know, because of social media, we're not producing content specifically for like, Hey, um, Mr.

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[00:04:00] Eric Goranson: something like that. Yeah, no, totally. But you're right though. The crossover gets out there so much. And I actually love checking in with you to see what the latest plumbing tools are out there, whether or not I'm going to use them or not.

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[00:04:20] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: like. Literally we, I just posted a video the other day and it's a, it's a full size drain cleaning machine. Like this is a professional multi thousand dollars cost tool that is, has been tested for, you know, a couple of years now that's put out into the industry for the professional and it runs on a battery.

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[00:04:45] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: Everything. I don't, I joked the other day because I was on a job site and the tile contractor accidentally, he ruined one of his, his cords. It was plugged into his grinder. And I joked to him, I'm like, wait, [00:05:00] your

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[00:05:01] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: in the world is that? Why don't you have a battery powered?

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[00:05:09] Eric Goranson: have a cord? And I said,

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[00:05:27] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: It was shoved under a box on a shelf. And like, you know what I mean? Like that's the state of, of how we exist out on the job site. Sound like everything. We do if it, if it's powered and it's related to plumbing and HVAC, it's probably cordless.

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[00:05:49] Eric Goranson: I am definitely not one of them, but until you actually see it and test it. You really don't notice that that battery puts out more power because they can actually [00:06:00] use the little computers inside to direct the amps to outperform what a plugged in tool is going to do. And it's amazing how they

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[00:06:07] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: Yeah, they can make the so DC motors in general are smaller. Uh, they, they have more potential energy. And so the stored energy in a DC, you know, battery. Like these lithium batteries. Now there's some kind of new technology out there. I don't know anything about, I don't remember what it's called, but like, there's just so much power available.

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[00:06:41] Eric Goranson: That's crazy. I think I saw that a new one you came out with that was that a chain auger or whatever that thing was, that drain cleaner that was super cool.

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[00:06:55] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: Well, we can thread pipe now. Uh, just today I got, uh, some [00:07:00] information and some pictures. I haven't used it myself cause it's not available yet, but for HVAC work, uh, which I do as well, like for many split systems and stuff like that, they have a, now I have a battery powered vacuum pump for referred, you know, for.

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[00:07:44] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: If you just stop and think about every job we do, there's an application for something like this. Like it doesn't, you know, just because you've done something a certain way for 20 years, doesn't mean you've been doing it the right way for 20 years.

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[00:08:00] Eric Goranson: Let's talk about this for a second. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. The haters out there. I've been doing it this way for 30 years. And you just kind of have to, in your head go. Sorry, brother. You've been doing it wrong for 30

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[00:08:24] Eric Goranson: and.

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[00:08:42] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: But like, if, if I were to learn now, Today that I would, I was taught something that incorrectly, like, let's just say it was wrong. And like, or there was just a very much better way of doing it. Sure. I would have to look back all the way to the guy who taught me and think. I mean, I [00:09:00] thought at the time it was right, but I guess maybe he was wrong.

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[00:09:22] Eric Aune Mechanical Hub: I think that,

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[00:09:40] Intro: house.

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[00:10:10] Eric Goranson: Welcome to the round the house show. This is where we talk about everything about your home every single week. Thanks for joining us today. I am still down here in Las Vegas at the design and construction week. This is a combination of the international builder show, kitchen, a bath industry show, and even this year, the national hardware show.

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[00:10:44] Eric Goranson: Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, this is great. Man, you guys again. Are changing the rules of

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[00:10:49] Dave Jones: again. We are changing the rules of ventilation. Yeah, innovations are our game this year. It gets incredible what we've been able to come up with and just the advances and changes.

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[00:11:08] Eric Goranson: unpack it. We're just going to dive in. Let's go.

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[00:11:29] Eric Goranson: Correct. Sure. There could be gas ranges that are leaking. There could be anything else. But that is such a small part of the ventilation problem compared to everything else that's coming up in

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[00:11:44] Dave Jones: It really doesn't matter. There's something going into the air off of your range. You're, we were talking earlier, you know, you're frying your country fried steak or whatever it is, right? That's that's emitting oil and and smoke and all sorts of other things in the air that you can't see and you're breathing right in without that, [00:12:00] that range hood getting that out, you're gonna run into a lot of problems.

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[00:12:08] Eric Goranson: We love it. Think about this when you walk into grandmother's house and you have that cookie smell. Oh, yeah. We all love that. It's awesome, but that's really not healthy. It's kind of like new, new car smell, right? You go, oh, this is great.

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[00:12:29] Dave Jones: be good smells for us. In fact, uh, you should be able to walk into your house and smell absolutely nothing. I don't know if your listeners know who Christoph Erwin is. Uh, he's, he's based in Atlanta and he's got the, um, anyway.

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[00:12:57] Dave Jones: We should get rid of that. Uh, you know, take them outside and smell [00:13:00] them. Yeah. Maybe? I don't know. That's better.

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[00:13:09] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And I mean, we have legislation issues out there in certain states. Sure. Because my personal belief is that every house should have a working ventilation hood that goes outside the building. And I don't understand that even in my state where they, if I do a rebuttal and I pull a building permit, guess what?

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[00:13:31] Dave Jones: buy a recirculating

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[00:13:40] Dave Jones: You're not getting anywhere. I mean, for the most part.

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[00:13:55] Dave Jones: A hood that ventilates out. I get it. Sometimes you can't do it. Make sure you have something else. Run your bath [00:14:00] fan, right? We don't think about that. Small apartment, like usually a small apartment is not going to have a vented range hood. It's going to have a recirculating, but run your bath and that's going to be ventilated out.

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[00:14:20] Eric Goranson: Probably better. Absolutely. And bath fans are a great example of that because I use them ventilation in my house because That's one of my next steps is, uh, and I just created my own, uh, fresh air intake problem at my house.

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[00:14:49] Eric Goranson: You sure did. So, that's my next issue. Makeup

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[00:15:01] Eric Goranson: Right now, I haven't done that yet. So, I'm not sure yet. Where are you going to dump it?

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[00:15:21] Dave Jones: I can hide it.

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[00:15:34] Dave Jones: That's a big challenge. So I'm always interested to hear about what people are doing with it. And

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[00:15:50] Dave Jones: Where's it coming

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[00:15:51] Eric Goranson: Yeah, yeah. Luckily, I don't have any other gas burning. I don't have like a gas, uh, you know, a gas water heater or something that I'm pulling in. Okay. You know. [00:16:00] Okay. I'm not dragging carbon monoxide back in. But I'm still pulling dirty air from the crawl space and attic space or something like that. What are you doing

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[00:16:08] Dave Jones: Do you run an ERV in your house? Not yet. Not yet. Oh, I heard a yet in there. Yeah, it's going to be happening. Alright, alright. It's

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[00:16:24] Eric Goranson: It's always one of the things, okay, that's the next step. But my biggest problem that I didn't like about them is, I'm in wildfire country. Yeah. And in August, September, there could be a week or two. Sure. Where we're the worst air quality in the world. Sure. And I didn't want to have something that I was going to have to manage on my own and go, Did I turn that off today?

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[00:16:51] Dave Jones: to do it with your wife, you're relying on somebody else at the house to handle it. So we're, we're taking a look at that, uh, in a really big way, a really unique way.

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[00:17:17] Dave Jones: And it's a bunch of switches and sensors that go around your house. All the switches have sensors in them. You have sensors you can put in all over your house. You can hardwire them. You can plug them in. So we can measure air. And we all know about that now. We've all seen molecules and a wares and air things and we've all heard them.

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[00:17:48] Dave Jones: We, we look at the EPA's AQI score, the air quality index. And if it says this is no bueno, we are not. You should not be breathing this. The system will say, Nope, we're going to go into research mode. I'm going to shut down the fresh air [00:18:00] supply. We're okay for a little while here. There's enough air in the home.

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[00:18:10] Eric Goranson: the air quality is better. Yeah. Cause I'll pull up on my phone. I'm like, Oh, that's bright red. That's not a good day today. You know what I mean?

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[00:18:23] Dave Jones: enough. Let's be real. Like I am because I work at a company that does inter air quality. The average consumer, the average homeowner out there doesn't know.

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[00:18:41] Eric Goranson: the house. We'll be right back. Don't

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[00:19:12] Eric Goranson: Welcome to the round the house show. This is where we help you get the most out of your home through information and education Thanks for joining us today By the way, this episode was brought to you by RootQuencher and RootQuencher. com. If you've got trees, shrubs, bushes, and you're wasting water when you're watering them, or you want to cut it back, check out RootQuencher.

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[00:19:50] Eric Goranson: And we've got Andrew Brown here from tool fetch, but we're talking the trades today. Brother, thanks for coming on around the house today. Eric, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. [00:20:00] This is such a big deal. And I don't think we can talk about it enough because I tell you what, I can't tell you how many times I'm seeing in schools and high school specifically right now, they've taken all the trades, right?

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[00:20:35] Eric Goranson: It's crazy. What's your take on this? I mean, it's happening all

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[00:20:43] Craig Elworthy: uh,

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[00:20:59] Andrew Brown: There's not [00:21:00] enough. So there's seven to eight trades people leaving. There's one or two maybe coming in. And it's really what's being pushed to the younger individuals. What's, what's the message that's being pushed? And it's interesting when the younger generation, when they're sitting down before they sign on that data line for college.

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[00:21:40] Craig Elworthy: maybe they'll

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[00:21:47] Andrew Brown: Not every school, but around a hundred thousand dollars, you know, go to, you know, trade school and spend less amount of money and for a less amount of time. And you could be working in an apprenticeship [00:22:00] and making money at the

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[00:22:12] Eric Goranson: And I think they're doing such a disservice and. And another show a couple of years ago, I brought up the concept that I've been waving the flag for a while is that, you know, if you and I go down and get a car loan and you and I walk down or get a house loan and get a mortgage, we have to kind of prove a business plan on how we're going to pay that back.

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[00:23:05] Eric Goranson: And maybe start a discussion. Of maybe this isn't for me and maybe I should get into the trades where I can actually be much better off and live a more comfortable lifestyle outside of my work environment. Yeah. And I can attest

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[00:23:18] Andrew Brown: because I went to college for four years and I was more confused when I came out of school.

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[00:23:26] Craig Elworthy: I was doing C plus plus on the

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[00:23:44] Andrew Brown: Put me in a different path for selling tools to the skilled trades. And it's just, I feel like sometimes you just don't get all the answers and you're just kind of going from major to major and there are a lot of individuals, especially [00:24:00] friends who came out of school and not happy with what they're doing.

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[00:24:15] Eric Goranson: see that happening often. It is, it is, it's crazy. And, and it's, I think we've got to really start with younger kids of getting them in school, using their hands on stuff and teaching some common sense stuff because.

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[00:24:47] Eric Goranson: I was creating something or it was the mechanic shop or whatever metal shop, welding, whatever that was back in, you know, in that middle school slash high school age. That we've just [00:25:00] yanked that out of the schools and made those things, you know, computer labs or whatever else, but all those things are needed, but we've just created this huge skills gap, which is now hurting the public moving forward.

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[00:25:25] Andrew Brown: classes? Where did they

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[00:25:27] Craig Elworthy: What happened? Right. I don't

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[00:25:48] Andrew Brown: But the shock class is not there. Maybe they just go to college and they do something else. So I'm all for bringing chalk classes back into schools on top of, if you don't go into a skilled [00:26:00] trade, you can use those skills, their lifelong skills, which you can apply to stuff around your house, because I know people that won't touch anything.

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[00:26:39] Andrew Brown: In this

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[00:27:04] Eric Goranson: And if you're a kid right now, and you're, you know, let's say if you're a parent listening to this show right now, or a grandparent. This is something that should be explored because I tell you what, you can go out and be an electrician and in a few years, you're making more than the school teachers are with less debt, a lot less debt,

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[00:27:25] Andrew Brown: And it's a shorter period of time, right? So you spend four years, maybe five years in college, you're ahead of the game. With less debt and not just in value. And then, you know, I always say eventually maybe you buy a home, you get a mortgage, that's more debt, more debt, more debt, and it's just, you just can't get out of it.

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[00:27:47] Eric Goranson: in that. You know, Andrew, there are some great groups out there as well. There, there are some small programs out there like we have here in my Portland metro area where I'm at. We have a group out in Forest Grove where they teach [00:28:00] building houses to kids.

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[00:28:31] Eric Goranson: You just left that school district, but there's like a hundred kids in this little town on this forestry program. And around the house. We'll be right back with my favorite episodes of 2023. Don't go anywhere.[00:29:00]

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[00:29:23] Eric Goranson: Thanks for having me. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. We are having a great summer here, at least in my part of the country. And of course the radio show goes across the U S and the podcast is international, but you have changed lawn care. And I love this.

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[00:29:44] Craig Elworthy: I don't know, uh, I don't know how much I've changed it. Per se, but uh, you know, it's, it's definitely a different way, uh, to, to go about, you know, tending to your lawn, uh, for your average homeowner and, you know, for, for a long time, lawn care has [00:30:00] been, you know, largely the same for the last 40 years, you've kind of had the same options and, and now it's kind of growing and evolving into something new, which is, which is really interesting.

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[00:30:31] Craig Elworthy: Oh, completely. Yeah. So, so, you know, all of our customers would find out the first thing we do is we give them a soil test because, you know, that was one of the things you're right. That was kind of a big problem was that you go to this big box store and you just stare at a rack of fertilizers and you really have no idea.

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[00:31:14] Eric Goranson: Yeah, and that way, you know, I mean, it's, it's interesting. You could have, you could be living out in a more desert community and have a sandy soil. You could be living in the forest and have this super acidic soil and you don't know until that test comes back what your problems are.

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[00:31:34] Craig Elworthy: And, and, you know, they're all over the map, right? Depending on, on where you live, you know, there's certain types of soil, like you said, but even within, you know, you, you could have a totally different soil structure than your neighbor, right? And just, just because of, you know, years of kind of tending to your lawn, you know, differently.

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[00:32:01] Eric Goranson: uh, to every lawn. Well, that's what I like you've done with Lombright because I think it's just really smart to give somebody, okay, a basis.

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[00:32:28] Eric Goranson: That bag looks cool and it's on sale. Great. And then throw in their lawn, expecting a miracle.

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[00:32:45] Craig Elworthy: You really do have to, you know, put in the time and effort to learn about this stuff in advance. And then, you know It's kind of, it's not exactly a science, it's not an art, it's kind of a craft, right? And if you can do it properly, it takes years and, and you'll get there [00:33:00] eventually. But, a lot of people just don't have the time, uh, to invest in, in making sure they do it right.

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[00:33:25] Craig Elworthy: Uh, and they, they didn't want any of that stuff that had been on there previously in the traditional sort of fertilizer market.

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[00:33:40] Eric Goranson: So at least, you know, what's going into the lawn. Exactly.

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[00:34:02] Craig Elworthy: Like you can go buy a bag of, you know, fertilizer from, from Home Depot, it's going to make your lawn look great, but it's not going to actually feed your soil. And over time, you're going to need more input. So you're going to need more fertilizer and more water just to get the same results because the microbiome is actually dying off.

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[00:34:37] Eric Goranson: Yeah, and a healthier lawn like that uses less water in the long run, correct?

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[00:34:42] Craig Elworthy: I was actually just listening to your, you know, how to save water. Um, and yeah, uh, getting a rain sensor on your irrigation is Offs on the list, but also it's the inputs that you put into your lawn, right? And how you can. Um, kind of adjust that over time and making sure that you're putting something into your loan.

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[00:35:06] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And that's great. And by the way, what happened to off the shelf fertilizer prices? I did a segment for my TV show and I ran down to the home improvement store just to get a few small bags.

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[00:35:35] Craig Elworthy: ago.

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[00:35:59] Craig Elworthy: So that [00:36:00] obviously that drives up the price of, you know, fertilizers across the board. Um, now the nice thing about us is we're not as price sensitive to that. We, we actually use some of the lowest content of nitrogen, um, in any fertilizer plan that I've seen out there. So we are, you know, sort of much less exposed to that

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[00:36:19] Eric Goranson: Well, and that's kind of the, the, the, I don't know, I don't want to call it the secret or the, the perceived advantage of the off the store shelf fertilizers, because. It seems that those things are maybe not healthy for your lawn, but they make you feel good because they just dump a bunch of Spot nitrogen on there that's going to be in there for three or four weeks your lawn gets nice green and thick because you've just overfed it it seems and then You're like, Hey, wait a minute.

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[00:36:48] Craig Elworthy: So you're, you're going to be feeding it a lot more often, and you're also going to need to feed it at the wrong time. So, you know, part of, part of the system that we have is letting, you [00:37:00] know, exactly when to put on exactly which products. Um, because if you get that wrong, and if you put on a high dose of nitrogen, Right now in the summer, it's really muggy where I am in Massachusetts.

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[00:37:25] Eric Goranson: And yeah, that makes again then you're then you're tossing Naturally, what you do is you go, oh, it needs more water, it needs more fertilizer, and you just keep making it worse and worse as you're kind of chasing your tail, if I understand that correctly.

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[00:37:38] Craig Elworthy: yeah. So, you're, you're gonna, again, and then you're gonna stop and say, you know what, I'm gonna call one of the, you know, the, the national lawn companies in there, and they're gonna do, you know, largely the same thing. They just, they have the knowledge and they understand, you know, what's going on in their lawn, but Yeah, the inputs are going to be the same and you're going to be spending a whole lot more now, [00:38:00] right?

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[00:38:27] Craig Elworthy: And, and by the way, good luck trying to cancel one because they, you know, I've heard horror stories where they just come out anyway.

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[00:38:36] Craig Elworthy: moved to like a different country. Uh, to, to actually up inan

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[00:39:07] Eric Goranson: The guy runs out, grabs the truck hose, and then just starts spraying, and I'm like you didn't even look at the soil. Don't go anywhere around the house. We'll be right back with my favorite episodes of 2023 after these important messages.