Episode 2058
Pressure Washers: The Only Thing Exploding More Than My Weekend Plans!
You better duck because we’re diving headfirst into the wild world of pressure washers that can explode! Yep, you heard that right. In this midweek special, we’re tackling the absurdity of pressure washers that not only clean but also have the potential to launch their capacitors like they’re auditioning for a role in a disaster movie. I'll share some juicy updates on my ongoing home projects, including my personal battle with a woodpecker that seems to think my cedar siding is its personal buffet. Plus, we’ll dish out the latest scoop on recalls that’ll make you rethink your tool arsenal. So grab your headphones and get ready for a rollercoaster of laughs and maybe a few eye rolls as we navigate this explosive topic!
Takeaways:
- Pressure washers can explode? Yeah, you heard that right, so let's keep our distance!
- We shared some wild stories about home improvement gone wrong, and you won't believe the chaos!
- The crazy world of high mortgage rates is making house selling a real circus act.
- Our journey through home renovations is like a soap opera, filled with unexpected plot twists!
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Makita
- Ryobi
- TTI Outdoor Power Equipment
- Air Vent
To get your questions answered by Eric G give us a call in the studio at 833-239-4144 24/7 and Eric G will get back to you and answer your question and you might end up in a future episode of Around the House.
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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:The House with Eric G. Your go to source for everything home improvement.
Speaker B:Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric.
Speaker A:G. Is here to guide you through.
Speaker B:The latest tips, tricks and trends.
Speaker B:So grab your toolbox, put on your thinking cap and let's get to work right here on around the House with Eric G. Welcome to the around the.
Speaker A:House show, the next generation of home improvement.
Speaker A:I'm Eric G. Thanks.
Speaker A:For me today, boy, is the midweek special.
Speaker A:This is the special we put out in the middle of the week that talks about the things that we're doing here on the show that didn't make it into last weekend show.
Speaker A:It didn't make it into this weekend show.
Speaker A:And we've got a lot of stuff going on out there.
Speaker A:I'm excited.
Speaker A:We've got some great stuff coming up on the horizon and thank you guys for tuning in.
Speaker A:I appreciate all of you.
Speaker A:If this is the first time catching the podcast, make sure you catch us.
Speaker A:You can find us over@aroundthehouse online.com.
Speaker A:so if you've got questions, concerns, you've got a subject you want us to cover, make sure that you get us over there.
Speaker A:A little update on what I'm doing.
Speaker A:I know I've been sharing with you guys my journey here of getting my house sold.
Speaker A:Yeah, didn't want to be selling my house this year, but this is how things go.
Speaker A:I've got a lot of the projects done.
Speaker A:We're going to be shooting today some driveway repair stuff and next week.
Speaker A:Yeah, pushed out a week because we added to the project a little bit.
Speaker A:So we've got a fun project coming up.
Speaker A:We'll talk about that in a second.
Speaker A:But really my story here is going through.
Speaker A:Divorce is never easy.
Speaker A:This is one of those things I didn't plan on ever having to go through again.
Speaker A:And here we are and the divorce is done and final.
Speaker A:But we've got to split the house up and give her share and my share and that's how these things go.
Speaker A:So that's one of those things.
Speaker A:Sometimes in remodeling projects you don't ever planned for, but maybe something to think about.
Speaker A:And it's been a tough one just trying to get this house wrapped up.
Speaker A:I was halfway through probably a four year project because we were going to do an addition.
Speaker A:We're going to do all this stuff because I had this small house on a big lot in Lake Oswego, Oregon, which is a premium place there in the city.
Speaker A:So that was going to be one of those things, that was going to be a great investment.
Speaker A:Am I getting the money out of it that I thought?
Speaker A:Yeah, I think we'll do okay.
Speaker A:But it's not going to be what it was going to be with the new addition on it.
Speaker A:Because it was going to be more fitting in the neighborhood.
Speaker A:It'll be an average house Versus one of the maybe smaller homes out there.
Speaker A:But it's still going to be a great buy.
Speaker A:With all those different things inside the house.
Speaker A:So I've been going through and just making sure.
Speaker A:That we've got all the little things dialed in.
Speaker A:Make sure that we pass any inspections that are going around.
Speaker A:Finding out those little issues.
Speaker A:And like that crazy woodpecker.
Speaker A:I've been fighting three holes in the siding lighter.
Speaker A:I think hopefully I've got him this time.
Speaker A:But once a week, he comes in.
Speaker A:And after I get that patched up, cleaned up, Comes right back in and starts digging a hole.
Speaker A:Right into the side of that cedar siding.
Speaker A:I think the next thing I'm going to do.
Speaker A:Is I'm going to take that piece out.
Speaker A:And put in some hardy plank or something in there.
Speaker A:So gonna make it a little bit harder to dig into.
Speaker A:But that's been some of the things I've been dealing with.
Speaker A:But next week, we've got.
Speaker A:Probably within a week here, we're gonna be doing the photo shoot.
Speaker A:And getting that up.
Speaker A:So you'll be able to see that stuff.
Speaker A:And see all the things that I've been doing on the house, which is going to be a lot of fun to do that.
Speaker A:Working with robbie, who used to work with me.
Speaker A:Over on my old TV show over there.
Speaker A:On Fox 12 here in Portland, oregon.
Speaker A:And we've got a lot of fun stuff coming up.
Speaker A:I'm working on putting together the new around the house northwest television show.
Speaker A:Putting that together right now, Working out those details.
Speaker A:We've got a lot of great things going on with that.
Speaker A:That's going to be even better as we come out with that.
Speaker A:Because we're going to be self producing that.
Speaker A:I'm so excited for that.
Speaker A:That's going to be a fun one here.
Speaker A:And just wrapping up the stuff like today here.
Speaker A:After I'm done with this, I got to go grab, oh, about a yard and a half, two yards of gravel.
Speaker A:I'm going to just make sure that I've got that little accessory parking area.
Speaker A:And a couple walkways between the carport in the shop.
Speaker A:Make sure those are all nicely graveled.
Speaker A:And looking good and just spiffed up.
Speaker A:So we're looking really good there.
Speaker A:And then weather wise, I think today I can actually shoot finally the driveway resurfacing because we've got some issues there.
Speaker A:I wanted to do it last week, but every 24 hours we were getting rain, so I really couldn't do that because I didn't want to hurt the finish because it says after you put that stuff down, you need 48 hours without rain.
Speaker A:And guess what?
Speaker A:That was going to be an issue.
Speaker A:So gonna work on that.
Speaker A:And then this weekend we're starting on the new patio project outback.
Speaker A:Getting that wrapped up.
Speaker A:It's the last big project there.
Speaker A:So we're gonna get in there working with system pavers.
Speaker A:That's gonna be a lot of fun.
Speaker A:Doing one of my favorite stone patterns, which I can't wait to show you.
Speaker A:That's going to look awesome.
Speaker A:And got some great new content coming up here as well on the show.
Speaker A:One of the things that I was talking about here last week and I wanted to give you another update because we're just a little bit closer and it's interesting, you know how the real estate markets in certain areas are slower now.
Speaker A:I know we are all across the world.
Speaker A:So whether you're in Florida, whether you're in Washington, whether you're, whether you're in Alaska or you're overseas someplace, everybody's listening to this show.
Speaker A:But here's what we got going on here.
Speaker A:For all of you guys out there wondering what's going on in the US if you take a look at the slow housing markets, we have got some big ones out there.
Speaker A:My area here a little bit slow.
Speaker A:Yeah, I will say that.
Speaker A:And here's one of the reasons why, when you start looking at why some reasons where the markets are slowing out there, you've got high mortgage rates.
Speaker A: % in: Speaker A:Prices a lot of people out of the market.
Speaker A:And then markets like Austin, Texas, Miami, Honolulu, home prices skyrocketed during the pandemic.
Speaker A:Pandemic.
Speaker A:But now buyers can't afford to pay for those anymore.
Speaker A:So listing sit.
Speaker A:Now, if you go into places like Austin, Texas, classic case, huge influx of builders during the tech boom.
Speaker A:Now tons of inventory outweighs demand.
Speaker A:And now that is the and I'm not saying that Austin, Texas is going to crash in their housing boom, but that is typically what we see is the cause of the housing booms.
Speaker A:When we see that across the country.
Speaker A:That's primarily been the big reason when we saw big housing crashes where there was a ton of supply and no buyers.
Speaker A:Austin, Texas has that kind of looking in their market.
Speaker A:Lots of homes, no buyers, that's a problem.
Speaker A:So now homes aren't moving quickly because buyers have more options and they're looking for deals.
Speaker A:So that's a big one.
Speaker A:Especially with mortgage rates getting higher and then migration shifts.
Speaker A:You think about it, places like Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm beach had a huge flood of pandemic air buyers.
Speaker A:Now you're remotely working, let's go move to Florida or I'm gonna have a second home because I've got a little extra money.
Speaker A:That wave cooled off, a lot of people had to go back to work.
Speaker A:So a lot of high priced homes with fewer takers.
Speaker A:And then of course we got rising insurance costs, hurricanes, floods, all that stuff.
Speaker A:Kind of like wildfires in California.
Speaker A:Those insurance companies are trying to make sure that they're not losing their butts and that's expensive.
Speaker A:Now when you get into local economic pressures, that's what happens.
Speaker A:Here in Portland, Oregon, places like Pittsburgh, Buffalo tend to move slower historically due to older housing stock and slower population growth.
Speaker A:But seeing places like in Hawaii where it's always expensive but fewer incoming buyers and high carrying costs and what we're seeing here in Portland, Oregon, for instance, it's really crazy because we've got a lot of jobs being lost with Nike.
Speaker A:Intel had some huge layoffs here recently.
Speaker A:So we've got that.
Speaker A:And that's really causing some of those issues out there.
Speaker A:And you're seeing that in Oregon.
Speaker A:It's just, man, they tax you guys, they tax us people here, you guys here that are in Oregon, you understand, they tax you every which way they can.
Speaker A:And right now, for instance here on our, they've got a roads thing they're trying to put through because nobody could agree on it.
Speaker A:So they're on a special session right now.
Speaker A:And our Oregon Department of Transportation here is an example.
Speaker A:They are blowing through money, money that was supposed to go to roads.
Speaker A:They decided we're going to put that into trails and we're going to do out and do all this other stuff.
Speaker A:It's not going to the roads.
Speaker A:And so there's the problem.
Speaker A: t tax increase on you guys in: Speaker A:And then just last week, one of the projects that they had pushed off said, oh, we're starting it now because they're trying to talk us into it again.
Speaker A:So massive amounts of taxes, massive overspending, massive fraud and abuse.
Speaker A:I think there's a hundred million dollars that they can't find.
Speaker A:They don't know where it went, which means it went into somebody's pocket.
Speaker A:But that's being said.
Speaker A:Higher tax places like that, people are moving out of those places.
Speaker A:People are moving, they're going to other areas.
Speaker A:So we're seeing a lot of those things around now.
Speaker A:What do I think's gonna happen here next coming up?
Speaker A:I think we're gonna see coming up here starting next week, if we get interest rates, if they drop quarter of a point, so 25 basis points, I think that's gonna spur housing.
Speaker A:Now if they turn around and say, hey, we're gonna go 50 basis points, which is like going from seven to six and a half, I think it's gonna really open up a lot of interest rates that'll get a lot of the mortgage rates.
Speaker A:Under 5, under 6%.
Speaker A:Into the fives, Tom.
Speaker A:Now people are going to go, okay, I think we can afford that new house.
Speaker A:So I think we're going to see that come up.
Speaker A:And when that happens, we'll see people remodeling.
Speaker A:We're going to see that stuff switch around.
Speaker A:So we could be coming into the perfect thing.
Speaker A:Now if that happens, I'm going to be landing that perfectly because I'm going to have my listing on my house pity on the day that's supposed to happen.
Speaker A:So I think there's about a 95% chance that's going to lower.
Speaker A:But how much is the big question?
Speaker A:My guess is going to be 25 basis points.
Speaker A:I'd love to see it at 50.
Speaker A:For all of us out there is homeowners, people with loans, people with things based on that interest rate.
Speaker A:So we'll see what happens.
Speaker A:Fingers are crossed.
Speaker A:I'd like to see that go down a bunch to help spur the economy.
Speaker A:Areas like Portland here, we've got a horrible problem with downtown where I'm at here, because downtown, all the businesses down there are suffering because unfortunately, the city of Portland doesn't understand it.
Speaker A:They've got the largest vacancy rate in commercial buildings in the United States is in downtown Portland, Oregon right now.
Speaker A:And of course, what do they do?
Speaker A:Saw last week, they're raising the parking rates down there and adding hours to that.
Speaker A:So it's even harder to get people down there.
Speaker A:So we'll see what happens.
Speaker A:But cities that understand all of this look really good.
Speaker A:Cities that don't understand, like In Portland and some of these other cities like that.
Speaker A:These cities that are hot mess, nothing's going to get better until people decide to change that out and put people in place that will understand that.
Speaker A:And that's a big one.
Speaker A:All right, guys, let's take a look at recalls here real quick.
Speaker A:We've got a couple that are interesting here.
Speaker A:I saw there's a few of them out there that I want.
Speaker A:Oh, that's not a good one.
Speaker A:We've talked about the Werner ladders and stuff that were a few weeks ago.
Speaker A:But one of the biggest ones is the Makita USA recalls cordless grease guns and grease gun hoses due to laceration hazards.
Speaker A:So basically the grease gun hose can develop a hole allowing grease to be ejected while using the grease gun.
Speaker A:About 63,000 of those.
Speaker A:So make sure if you've got that Makita grease gun, that's a big one there.
Speaker A:And the other one that I saw too is the Ryobi, which is TTI Outdoor power equipment.
Speaker A:They're pressure washers due to projectile hazard.
Speaker A:So the pressure washer's capacitor can overheat and burst, causing parts to be forcefully ejected.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:So basically that electric motor can launch the capacitor.
Speaker A:That's a problem.
Speaker A:There's about 764,000 of those in the U.S. 16,000 were sold in Canada.
Speaker A:Now to find out more information all these things you can go to cpsc.gov and another one here.
Speaker A:Electric motors for gable and roof mounted attic fans.
Speaker A:Recall due to fire hazard distributed by air vent.
Speaker A:Here's the problem.
Speaker A:There's about 2.9 million.
Speaker A:So the recalled electric motor safety cutoff may pose a risk of short circuit and fire hazard when in use.
Speaker A:So stop using the recalled motors and contact air vent for a refund.
Speaker A:That's great.
Speaker A:Not sure what you're going to put in for another one, but they're going to give you your money back.
Speaker A:So you're going to have to go find another one.
Speaker A:So take a look at that.
Speaker A:So if you've got an electric motor, you know, if you got an electric gable roof, attic powered roof fan, take a look at this.
Speaker A:This could be an issue.
Speaker A:There's 2.9 million, which is significant out there and then lots of the lithium battery chargers, those kind of things that we see out there.
Speaker A:So be very careful, guys.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:We're running out of time here.
Speaker A:I try to keep these fairly quick for us here on our midweek special.
Speaker A:We got a great show coming up this weekend.
Speaker A:I've got to more with Johnny Dudley on and he'll be doing some co hosting duties with me.
Speaker A:So we'll be having some fun there.
Speaker A:And we got some great new videos coming out here in the next week.
Speaker A:I just got to get them finished up so I'll get those over to you.
Speaker A:And we got some great new collaborations coming up.
Speaker A:There is so much exciting stuff happening this fall that I can't wait to share it with you.
Speaker A:To find out more information about us, head over to aroundthe house online.com hey guys, I appreciate you tuning in today.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:And if you've got any questions head over to the website and I will be there to answer them for you.
Speaker A:I'm Eric G. Thanks for tuning in to around the House.
Speaker B:Make sure to follow us on social media.
Speaker B:Just head to aroundthehouse online.com for all the links.
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Speaker B:Just type in at around the House with Eric G and click subscribe and ring the bell for updates.
Speaker B:We will see you next time with you.
