Ask This Old House

Kevin

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

Mike

You don't feel it on a summer day like today, but in the winter, my hands get dry. I get a zap from the static

when I touch the outlet. Richard

Sure. Up here in the mountains, the air can get a bit dry. I'm heading to Park City, Utah, to help a house get a little more comfortable.

Jenn

These containers look great every summer, but they don't last through the winter. I've got some ideas to fix that.

Tom

Do you know the difference between a 3/8 lag screw and a number 14 wood screw? Well, I'll help you decode screw terminology.

Evan

And, did you know that where you live affects how you pay for electricity? I'll walk you through the different types of billing and give you some advice on how to save money.

Richard

Phew. Are you Mike?

I am. Richard

I'm glad.

Mike

Hi, Richard.

Welcome to Park City. Richard

Nice to be here. Now, Park City is down there in the valley and that's at, what? 7,000-foot

elevation. Mike

Yeah.

Richard

You're up here on the ridgetop. What a spot. How'd you get here?

Mike

Well, the house. We fell in love with it and moved in about a year ago.

Richard

The views inside must be unreal.

Mike

Yeah, it's really incredible.

Richard

Now, you wrote me about humidity.

Mike

Yes. Let me take you inside.

Richard

This feels like the perfect place

to daydream all day. Mike

Absolutely. It's beautiful, but it sure is dry. You don't feel it on a summer day like today, but in the winter, my hands get dry. I get a zap from the static

when I touch the outlet. Richard

Sure. Well, it's a common complaint. We hear it all the time. It's probably even worse out here in the high mountains, where the air can get even drier. Anytime we hear about that condition, we think about adding a whole-house humidifier. Typically, the house has a ducted system. That's how most houses in America are heated and cooled and so we just put that humidifier on the side of the ductwork and the fan would move that moist air through the ductwork, out through the register, and blend it all in, but you said in your email you had a radiant floor heating system. That's gonna require a little different solution. Let's go check the mechanical room. You got a nice big beautiful mechanical room here.

Mike

Thank you.

Richard

Alright. Let's talk humidity. This is a standard steam humidifier right here. If you open up the cover, it has a canister right here that'll be filled about two-thirds of the way with water. I brought a little cutaway right here inside the canister. You can see there are two elements that are immersed into the water and, when electricity is applied, by conduction, electricity will pass between these two elements and it'll excite the water enough to change its state

from water to steam. Mike

Got it.

Richard

Now, steam will leave out through the top right here. Minerals will drop to the bottom. So, out through the top, steam will leave, go through this hose right here. Now, if you had a ducted system,

we'd use something like this

a wand that would let steam go into the ductwork and then the fan would push air across it, grabbing that humidity and putting it through the ductwork. But you don't, so we need the second component right here, which is this fan box. The hose will send steam right here and steam will come out here. But there's a little fan right here that'll draw air in from the room, across the fan, and then back out here to mix with the steam and deliver it into the space. Now, there are three connections we need to make to the steam generation unit. One is water, which we got right here. The other is a drain, which is perfect right there. And electricity's perfect, right close. So, somewhere in here feels like the right location for the unit that's gonna generate the steam.

Alright. Richard

The other component we have to think about carefully where we place it is this fan pack and that has to be in the right location inside the conditioned space. So if we introduce humidity into the space, it'll equalize through the whole building,

even without ductwork. Mike

Okay.

Richard

So, in general, this is a perfect location right here to introduce humidity. We're right behind

the mechanical room here. Mike

Great.

Richard

But, if I put this onto the wall here and this is highly concentrated, I'd worry about too much humidity coming here onto these surfaces and causing mold, so there's a prohibition about where you place it. It's 2-foot clearance from side to side, 5 feet up, and 1.5 feet down. Guess where the perfect location in your entire house is. It's right where this light is? What do you think of this light?

Mike

It's not great. We can move it.

Richard

That's the perfect answer.

chuckling

Mike

Yeah, alright.

Richard

Local HVAC technicians Josh and David will be helping us with the installation today.

Irish tune plays

Richard

They start by mounting the unit on the mechanical side of the room. With the light removed and the hole cut to fit the fan box, David can slide the fan box into position and secure it to the wall with some screws. Then, it's time to make all the water connections. David starts with the fan box and attaches the wand to a series of copper pipes that connect to the steam unit. Then, they run some PVC pipes down to the drain in the floor. Finally, they can connect the unit to the water supply and also make their electrical connections to power the unit. Alright. So, the last piece to connect is a device to control the humidifier itself. It's called a humidistat. Pretty simple to operate. You got up and down arrows to set the relative humidity that you're looking for and on and off buttons right here.

Mike

Okay, and what should I be looking for, in terms of the humidity?

Richard

Well, that depends. I mean, I think ideal humidity is somewhere between 30% and 40%, but you gotta be careful, as you get into the really coldest days of the winter. If you have too much humidity and you got cold surfaces here, condensation can form on the windows, okay? But I want you to enjoy this, my friend.

Mike

Great. Thanks for coming to Park City.

Richard

My pleasure. Enjoy your little piece of heaven.

Mike

Thank you.

Kevin

Hm. Nice job,

Richard. Richard

Thank you.

Nice place to visit. Kevin

Yeah, I bet. So, when I see that, a little bit of work went into it.

Sure. Kevin

I'm thinking to myself, "Why not a room humidifier, or even two of them?"

Richard

You certainly could, but this is, indeed, what its name suggests. It's a room humidifier, so you put it in an individual room. As you use it, water will go down.

You have to refill it. Kevin

Right.

Richard

The steam's coming out through the top right here. Looks similar to what we'd get out of our wall pack. But, if you really have a whole house, this is not the way to do it. You'd have to have too many of them and have to be maintaining them all the time.

Kevin

Yeah, and it is super dry out there. So, then, what's the maintenance on the device you put in?

Richard

Well, this is the canister that I cut away, cut apart. You know, there's a couple of connections, the two electrical connections here. There's water and drain out the bottom. And this thing, depending on the water quality, if you got high calcium, high minerals, it could probably clog up in a year, maybe, but it could go a little more, maybe every year

Kevin

A year, huh?

Richard

or two or three, okay?

Kevin

And, to replace it, it costs what?

Richard

It's about 100 bucks, I think, for that, so it's not really cheap. At least it'll tell you. There's a callout light on there that'll tell you when this thing has to be replaced.

Kevin

Okay. Although, 100 bucks, potentially, a year, plus the operational costs, that's not nothing.

Richard

That's right. There's another alternative, another unit on the market. It's a little more money on the front end, but what they did is they made this component out of stainless steel, so this canister

does not have to be replaced Kevin

Oh, nice.

Richard

and this is an immersion element that you can pretty much keep clean, so, there should be a little more on the front but less maintenance on the backside.

Got it. Richard

Okay? But, either way, if you lived in a place like that, where it's dry, dry, dry up in the mountains,

you need one of these solutions. Kevin

Got it. Alright.

Good information. Thank you. Richard

Thanks.

Tranquil tune plays

Kevin

Tommy, I got the screw you asked for, and the nail and the nut and the bolt

laughing

Kevin

and everything else.

Tom

Yeah. Well, you laugh. These little jars with assortment of screws, nuts, and washers are handy to have. You never know if you're missing just that one screw.

Kevin

In a pinch, maybe, but I think people could probably do better, if they knew what they were looking for when they went looking for screws and bolts and nails.

Tom

That's true, and there's a lot of different sizes and different things. Alright. First of all, this is a lag screw,

even though it has a hex head. Kevin

Mm-hmm.

Tom

Alright? This is meant for wood. If you look at the thread, it's a coarse thread. That means wood. If you look at this, this is a carriage bolt. It has a machine thread. It's fine thread and there's no way to screw that into material, so you have to drill a hole and you want to use a mechanical fastener, so you're gonna use a washer, and then you put the nut on that, and, now, that's great for screwing things like a post to a deck or two pieces of framing material together or just a lot of different things. And that, cinch that down tight and that's not gonna go anywhere.

Kevin

Let's set the bolts aside for a second and talk about screws because there's more application in our world for those. There's a whole bunch of different kinds, for a whole bunch of different purposes.

Tom

Right. And I guess the most common, people say, they go to the store, and they say, "Well, I want a screw, so let's grab some drywall screws."

Kevin

And why not? Use them for everything.

Tom

Well, and they're relatively inexpensive, but they shouldn't be used for everything.

Kevin

So why is that?

Tom

It's not a structural screw.

Kevin

So what does that mean, they're not a structural screw?

Tom

Well, it means that it doesn't have a lot of tensile strength. It's brittle.

Yeah. Tom

So if you -- Many people have done it. You try to screw a piece of wood to something and it gets in there and, all of a sudden, the screw snaps off.

Kevin

Snaps right off. So you wouldn't want to use it for hanging something heavy.

Tom

Not cabinetry and stuff like that.

Kevin

Perfectly fine, though, for drywall.

Tom

Right. Now, if you look at the thread of the drywall screw, it goes all the way up because this is meant to go through a soft material. It goes right through and it's not gonna pull back and it grabs well. If you're screwing something into hardwood, you want a finer thread and drywall screw actually comes with a real fine thread for screwing into steel studs.

Kevin

Mm, interesting. I think people are familiar, for sure, with the slotted head right there, the flathead,

Tom

Right.

Kevin

and the Phillips, for sure.

Tom

Yeah, and this Torx.

Kevin

Yeah, which is sort of a star-shaped, different sizes.

Tom

Right, and I prefer the Torx head today because they grab well and they don't strip out.

Kevin

Alright. So different types of heads.

Yep. Kevin

Now, if you are looking for screws, they've got a coding system.

Yeah. Kevin

They've got a length, a number. Explain that to us.

Tom

Yeah. So you'd go to the home center and all these screws have a label on it. like this is a 10x2, alright?

Kevin

Okay.

Tom

Alright. The 10 is the diameter and the 2 is the length overall.

Kevin

So the 10 is like a gauge number?

Right. Kevin

And as you go up in gauge, 10, 12, 14, those become bigger screws.

Tom

Yeah. So these are 14x3.5.

Gotcha. Tom

Alright. So, heavier. The bigger the number, the higher.

Kevin

So, if you're buying them, it's right on the package. That makes a lot of sense. But, if you're taking that one screw out from, say, the hinge where you've got the stripped head and you've gotta match it, you're not sure what you're looking for.

Tom

Right. Well, you can buy one of these gauges like this and keep it in your home shop or the home centers and the hardware stores have them mounted right below the screws and you can take the screw that you want to match and you try to put it into the hole that it fits and that's a 10, number 10 screw. And, now, if you want to know the length, you take the screw and you hold it into the gauge, tight at the top, and it tells you that's 2 inches long.

Kevin

Oh, interesting. It's even got a little triangle cutout there to help ya.

Tom

Right. Seats right on there.

Kevin

In terms of length, what's the rule of thumb for how long of a screw you should use, depending on what you're putting together?

Tom

Oh, it's very important, I think. The rule of thumb for finding the screw length is take the material thickness and multiply it times 2.5.

Kevin

The material thickness of what you're trying to attach?

Right. Kevin

So like a 1/2-inch drywall, you take the 1/2-inch versus the 1.5-inch stud?

Tom

Okay, so let's say 1/2-inch drywall.

2.5 would be 1.25-inch screw. Kevin

Right.

Tom

5/8 drywall would be 1 9/16, so, 1 5/8

screw. Kevin

Oh, interesting.

Tom

Alright. So that's very important. It's important that you use the screw that's gonna grab what it needs to grab and hold what you want it to hold.

Kevin

Okay, so, last question for you. Drywall screw, inside, obviously.

Tom

Exactly. I mean, that drywall screw that's black, that's for interior. These zinc screws are interior. You don't want to be using these screws outside because they can rust. You want to use a screw that could be stainless. It could be galvanized. It could be ceramic-coated, but you want to make sure that it's rated for exterior use and also rated for pressure-treated use because it could rot, if it's the wrong material.

Kevin

Alright, Tommy. Good information. Thank you.

My pleasure. Kevin

Have one.

Tom

Oh, thanks.

Jenn

Hi,

Kate. Kate

Hey, Jenn!

Nice to meet you. Kate

Nice to meet you, too. Thank you so much for coming out.

Jenn

This is beautiful. I love your home. I love this entryway. You want to tell me a little bit about it?

Kate

Sure! Yeah, no, we fell in love with the house right away, that kind of classic Colonial-style,

but especially the portico. Jenn

Mm-hmm.

Kate

And we really love the idea of these containers kind of flanking the front door, but, as you can see, I've really struggled keeping the plants alive.

laughing

Jenn

Right. Well, the containers are beautiful and these look like they were boxwoods.

Kate

They were. Many months ago, they were, yes.

laughs

Jenn

Well, I think having a broadleaf evergreen, which these boxwoods are, is great to mark the entryway, and a broadleaf evergreen just means it's gonna stay green year-round.

Okay. Jenn

But, a lot of times, when plants are aboveground here in New England, the frost and freeze can affect the root system, so, if this was in the ground, it would be fine.

Mm-hmm. Jenn

I would love to replant what you have here, but I have some tips to help it last throughout four seasons, instead of two.

Kate

Right. Awesome. Let's get to it.

Jenn

Alright. Let's do it. Okay, so what I want to do is add some insulation to this planter.

This is a piece of rigid foam. Kate

Okay.

Jenn

You could get it from any home center. It's 1 inch thick and it's gonna protect the root system, just insulate it through the winter.

Mm-hmm. Jenn

So what I want to do is measure the planter. I want to keep it below the soil line, so I'm gonna cut it at 15 inches and then 15x18. So we need four sides 15x18 inches. Nice! Perfect! See how easy that was?

Kate

Yeah!

Good job. Kate

Great.

Jenn

So these drainage holes at the bottom of the pot, I'm gonna cover with shards of terra-cotta so soil doesn't clog and prevent it from draining.

Kate

So, Jenn, I see that you're stacking the pottery shards in little kind of piles. Is there a reason that you do it that way?

Jenn

I want the water to be able to penetrate through, and I want the drainage holes to stay clear.

Okay. Jenn

Okay. Can you hand me a piece of landscape fabric? Just gonna put it on top.

Kate

And what's this fabric for?

Jenn

It's a separation. Number one, it'll hold the shards in place, and then the water will penetrate through it, but it also separates the soil from bleeding and washing out through the holes.

Okay. Jenn

And then, one more piece of the fabric, just a little double layer. Okay. Let's start by putting handfuls of this organic potting mix on top of the landscape fabric to hold it in place. Then, we'll dump the rest of the bag in. Alright. That should be good. Yours looks good. Let's just dump the rest of the bag in, kinda the halfway mark. These are our new boxwoods. Let's just pick them up, put them in the planter to check the height, just so we're at the right soil level.

Kate

Wow, looks great.

Jenn

I love it. So, now, we're just gonna take them out of the pot. This one's not too bad. Just it's a little bit root-bound at the bottom. Alright. I'm just gonna tease these roots a little bit.

Kate

This is definitely a step that I've skipped in the past. I didn't realize that was something that would help them grow.

Jenn

Yeah, just breaking them up will help them not grow in a circular fashion and they'll reach out to the soil. Alright, we just want to make sure they're centered in the pot, for the symmetry at the front door.

Kate

Okay. Mine looks pretty good.

Jenn

So does mine. Perfect. Alright. So now let's backfill around the root ball, maybe three-quarters of the way up.

Kate

Okay.

Jenn

So, we're gonna underplant the boxwood with this ivy and I got them in bigger containers and more mature, so they'll automatically start cascading off the edges.

Kate

Okay. Great. And you just kind of rip them apart to kind of get the smaller pieces that you need as the underplanting?

Jenn

Exactly. So, I think one of these containers can break into four different pieces.

Kate

Okay. That doesn't hurt them?

Jenn

Nope! Just once they're watered in, they'll be great. So everything's installed. What do you think, Kate?

Kate

Wow, Jenn! They look amazing. Total transformation.

Jenn

It really anchors this front entryway.

Couple things I want you to remember is

under the portico, it's not gonna get any rainwater, so, I want you to hydrate, water it, all the way until the end of the season,

at least until November. Kate

Okay.

Jenn

And another way that plants lose their moisture is through their leaves, so I'm gonna leave you with a bottle of antidesiccant spray that you apply at the end of the season and it'll help seal the pores, so, when the winds rip through, they'll be a little more protected.

Kate

Well, that is definitely one step I've skipped in the past.

Alright. Enjoy. Kate

Thank you so much, Jenn.

Thank you. Take care. Kate

Thanks for coming over.

Kevin

Nice job,

Jenn. Jenn

Thanks.

Kevin

So, spraying the plant at the end of the season, that's a step that I think most people skip. I mean, it's kind of a subtle point, that the wind can dry out the plant, not just, you know, dry soil.

Jenn

That's true, so, at the end of the season, always water your plant in, but a plant takes up moisture through the roots and it's held and stored in these leaves. When you put the antidesiccant on, you spray it on both sides of the leaves and it helps seal the pores, so, when winter cold winds are ripping through, it's not gonna rob that plant of its moisture.

Kevin

So what does it look like when it's actually on there? Like am I gonna notice it, as a homeowner?

Jenn

Well, check it out. You just really want to drench it. It's gonna dry, might leave a little bit of a shiny coat,

but then it's just sealed. Kevin

Hmm.

Jenn

And, if you want to compare it to something, it's like putting lip balm on so you don't get windburn. And then they're ready for the winter season.

Kevin

Alright. Good information, as always. Thank you.

Richard

Well, Ross, you know better than probably anybody there's some stuff I don't get,

you know

the engine mass, online billing, you know, changing my password.

I'll help you with that. Richard

But what I really don't get is my electric bill. In the old days, every month, you get a bill from the local -- Edison, they called it back then.

Yeah. Richard

It was measured in kilowatt-hours. It was simple. But, nowadays, you open up a bill, you don't know what you're paying.

Ross

So the standard way of billing is called a fixed rate based on your kilowatt-hour of usage. The example I give is that, if you have a 100-watt lightbulb, you turn that lightbulb on, it consumes 100 watts every instant, but, if I run it for one hour, it's 100 watt-hours.

Richard

So you multiply that by something to get a kilowatt-hour.

Ross

Right, so 1/10 of a kilowatt-hour, in that example. But what changed it all is deregulation, okay?

Richard

Okay.

Ross

With a deregulated model, the electricity company that's usually highly regulated, that controls the generation of the electricity, the transmission, and the delivery to every single house, with deregulation, now, the generation is by any company.

Richard

So it could be from far away

Exactly. Richard

and come across lines.

Ross

What does that do? It's competition, which drives down the prices for consumers, but they've also changed the billing structures. Alright? So one of the models that they've adopted is called demand charges or peak pricing.

Okay. Ross

With that model, you're charging homeowners a fixed rate of electricity that's tiered based on how much electricity used in a 15-minute window for the month.

Richard

So how do you change that tier? What happens?

Ross

Right. So if I turn on a lot of lightbulbs or a lot of compressors or a lot of loads in a house, I'm gonna draw a lot of electricity all in a 15-minute window and that's gonna put me into a different tier.

Richard

So how long do you stay in that tier?

For the whole month. Richard

Ooh! That doesn't sound very good. You could be penalized in a big way for having a bad couple of minutes.

Ross

Yeah, it's tricky because you don't know, right? You don't know how much energy you're using at different times, so you'd have no idea.

Richard

So is that a popular model?

Ross

So, yeah, it's not a popular model, thankfully. It's not used in many parts of the country, but one that is used in a lot of parts is called time of use. And, with time-of-use rates, they're charging you a set rate of electricity

for different times of the day. Richard

Okay.

Ross

So, if you think about it,

from 9

00

am to 9

00 pm, for example, that window, it may be at a very high rate of electricity, but off-peak,

meaning from 9

00 pm through the night, it's actually gonna be a lower peak.

Richard

And I could get that. You got x amount of power plants and you got all these people trying to demand too much right then, so I get that, and they would raise the rates.

That's supply and demand. Ross

My advice for most homeowners is to break the home, the electrical devices, into three categories, right? So one is no control, right? So the refrigerator of the house, the well pump,

if you have one. Richard

Yeah.

Ross

You really have no control over that, right?

Richard

You don't want to turn them off.

Ross

That's right. The next category is some control, so that would be, like your HVAC, right? I change the set point lower or higher to get past a certain period of time. Eventually, it's gonna turn back on, but that's some control. Full control will be the appliances that literally you have full control over. So when you run your dishwasher, right?

I can pick and choose to run it at 9

00 pm,

set the timer to run later -- Richard

And they all have a timer now.

Ross

That's right. The big one, electric cars, nowadays, they consume a ton of electricity,

best to do that at night. Richard

Yeah.

Ross

Another item to look for is what's called ghost power

or phantom power. Richard

Mm-hmm.

Ross

A lot of people don't understand this, but, you can have a device that's actually plugged into the wall,

Right. Ross

that is turned off, but it still consumes electricity.

Richard

And there's a lot of them, right? Phone chargers, clock radios, modems, printers.

Ross

Every clock and every microwave and every oven. It actually equates to almost a quarter of your electric bill in your average house.

Richard

I think people would be surprised if they realized how much it was using.

Ross

Yeah, it's a big deal,

yeah. Richard

Right. I often think about how we're gonna change people's behaviors for electricity and you got me to put that device into my house, which is so cool 'cause I could then see my recessed can lights and how much they use

and it was crazy. Ross

Real-time data.

Richard

Right. It really made me change how I do electricity

at the house. Ross

Right. You leave those lights off now, right?

Richard

I do,

yeah. Ross

Yeah, it's crazy. So, what utility companies are doing is they're now retrofitting buildings with smart meters and what that allows them to do is actually have much better control of their grid 'cause they can see real-time, just like that device does,

Richard

Right.

Ross

this device is gonna tell the utility company what the grid is doing, what that house is doing, real-time.

Richard

Do you imagine a day where they might be able to control some of those devices you talked about turning off?

Ross

There's a lot of talk going on right now about where that future's going and there could be a day where the actual electric meter and the utility company has the ability to control all or some of the devices inside the house. So if the grid is getting overtaxed, what they'll do is they'll pull out your water heater or pull out some of those and drop off some of those appliances to save on the grid. and, you know, we'll see if it goes there, but it's an interesting angle.

Richard

You're really smart, but I still don't really understand my electric bill.

Laughter

Ross

Don't worry. I'll help you.

Kevin

Next time on "Ask This Old House"...

Tom

I'll show you how to repair some old drawers on a dining room built-in. They stick a little bit, but I think we can make those slide easier, but we can definitely fix those chips on the front of the drawers. Man #1: Yeah, need some help. Man #2: This room has no overhead light. I'll fix that.

Kevin

And, we'll have a look at some more home inspection nightmares.

Tom

Here's one right here, Mark. Now, they clearly need to watch a little more

of you on TV. Mark

Yes, I can tell.