Ask This Old House

Kevin

Today on "Ask This Old House"...

Jenn

I'll show you how to set up an indoor garden that can produce fresh vegetables and herbs even when it's cold outside. So today, we're growing tomatoes, lettuce, and basil, but the pods come in many different options. You could grow chili peppers or strawberries. You could grow herbs, and you could even grow flowers.

Man

Oh, wow.

Tom

I'll show you what you need to know about using a hole saw.

Richard

A frozen burst pipe can be a catastrophe. I'll show you why it happens and how you can prevent it. Oh!

Chuckles

Mark

And I'll replace this terra-cotta hearth with something a little more modern. We ended up using a ceramic gray slate tile.

Ian

I love it.

Kevin

Hey. Good morning, Mark. Hey, Jenn.

Morning. -Kevin

Ah, breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Ooh. What are you eating, Mark?

Mark

No, no, no, that's the good stuff! You eat eggs, potatoes, sausage.

Kevin

Breakfast of champions, huh?

Mark

Microwave.

Jenn

Yeah, there's nothing good about that, but this, on the other hand...

Kevin

Now look at Jenn, see, salad, huh? Made yourself a salad for breakfast?

Jenn

Well, I didn't only make it. I grew it. So a homeowner wrote in last fall, and he really wanted to garden indoors during the winter, so I came up with a solution and tried it myself, and it works.

Kevin

Wow. Thanks for coming over, Jenn.

Jenn

Thanks for writing me. Wow, this is an incredible garden. How long have you been working on it?

Kevin

My wife and I, we've been working on this garden for 5 years now, and every single summer, we've been hanging out here. We've got sunflowers. We've got strawberries, cherry tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, and we've got flowers here.

Jenn

Wow, and you even have a few grape tomatoes still hanging out at the end of the season.

Kevin

It's still going. It's still going, yep, but what I've been doing a lot of this summer is basil.

I first got -- -Jenn

Wow. You certainly have. That's quite a few basil plants there.

Kevin

Yeah. It started with just one here. And then I took it and cut the clippings, put it in water and propagated it over and over and over again and made all of these pots.

Jenn

This all came from one plant?

Kevin

Absolutely,

one plant. -Jenn

Wow. That's incredible. Good job.

Kevin

But what I use this basil for is, my great grandmother came from the Amalfi Coast in Italy, and she passed on a recipe for pesto sauce, and believe it or not, it takes all of these plants to make pesto sauce, and unfortunately, this is it. Every single summertime, we can make the pesto sauce, and we'd love to keep the growing all year round, in fact, grow tomatoes and lettuce, but we can't grow indoors because we don't have much light.

Jenn

Right, and see, this is the problem that every gardener goes through at the end of the season. You're going to miss that fresh flavor, but I do have an idea, maybe a solution for growing in any kind of light condition, so I've got something to show you. I see what you mean, Kevin. This kitchen is definitely really dark.

Kevin

Yeah. We need some more light in here.

Jenn

Yeah. The dark wood definitely brings it down, and the windowsill, there's not much room to put anything on it.

Kevin

Precisely.

Jenn

So my kitchen is exactly the same, so what I brought you today is this indoor grow system, and as you know, plants need water, sunlight, and food, and what this is going to do is replicate all three of those things. Inside here is, this is a water reservoir, and it's going to be filled with water, and it comes with nine of these cups, and at the bottom of each cup is a wick.

Kevin

Oh,

yeah. -Jenn

Yeah, so that wick is going to draw the water up from the reservoir and give adequate watering to the whole -- each individual plant. So each of these, you pop off the top, and then you use one of the seedpods. So, in the seedpod is food, which is fertilizer, the seed, and the soil, and then, on top, we have these LED lights.

Our sunlight. -Jenn

Yes, the sunlight, so this is going to mimic sunlight, and all you do is click it on top, and then it'll have the sunlight it needs.

It'll mimic the outdoors. -Kevin

Well, this is excellent.

Jenn

So we brought today these three different types.

We have tomatoes. -Kevin

Mm-hmm.

Jenn

This one is basil, and I'm going to give that to you because you're the basil king, and this one is lettuce. So today, we're growing tomatoes, lettuce and basil, but the pods come in many different options. You could grow chili peppers or strawberries. You could grow herbs, and you could even grow flowers.

Kevin

Oh, wow.

Jenn

Okay, so these are the risers that the grow light is going to sit on. You insert yours at that end, and mine clicks in over here, but mine has the groove, which the wire will feed into, so it's not hanging everywhere. And then we take this grow lamp. Yeah. Just make... And just like that, and then I'm going to feed this wire down the side to neatly tuck it away. Okay, Kevin, you want to grab those little mini domes? And what that's going to do is, you put them on each of the pods, and it's going to act like a little mini greenhouse and help the germination. So this is all set, and then we can just put water in it and then move it on over. All right. Let's slide it back into place.

Kevin

All right. That looks good.

Jenn

All right. Can you plug it in for me?

Kevin

Sure.

Jenn

Takes a minute.

Kevin

Ah!

Jenn

Ta-da! So this is on a timer. It's on for 16 hours, off for 8. Just when you restart it tomorrow morning, it would be great. Then you could go along with the natural daylight pattern. Another thing is, you can take these domes off in about a week when you start to see germination and then just save them for later for the next batch that you're going to grow, but otherwise, just make sure the water levels

are appropriate and let it grow. -Kevin

All right. I'll make sure to send you some pesto.

I look forward to that. -Kevin

Thanks for coming over.

Jenn

All right. Thanks for having me. Happy growing.

Kevin

Well, he was into it, huh?

Jenn

Oh, he was definitely into it.

Kevin

And is this the result?

Jenn

This is after 6 weeks of growing.

Kevin

That is so lush.

Jenn

So, yeah, we have the basil. We have the tomatoes, and we have lettuce, so this would be less leggy if you pinched it back more along the way. These are all the yellow flowers ready to pop out, the little cherry tomatoes.

Kevin

Each one of those will be a tomato?

Jenn

Yeah. Isn't that great?

Kevin

Very cool, and there's your breakfast.

Jenn

Yep, and this is my breakfast ready to go.

Kevin

Did he make good on his promise?

He did. -Kevin

Did he really? Oh!

Jenn

I brought you some right here.

Look at this. -Jenn

A little pesto action.

Kevin

You brought some bread, so we can go in?

Jenn

Yep.

Kevin

Grandma's recipe, let's see how he did.

Jenn

This is Amalfi Coast style right here. Let me know. See what you think.

Kevin

Oh, wow. That's really good. Wow. Is that lemon?

Jenn

Mm,

he liked using lemon. -Kevin

Is it?

Jenn

That was, like, one of the key of his secrets.

Kevin

That's grandma's secret?

Jenn

Mm-hmm.

Kevin

All right. Don't tell anybody.

Jenn

I know, Italian style.

Chuckles

Jenn

Kevin

Hey,

Tommy. -Tom

Hey, Kevin. How are you?

Kevin

All right. Talking hole saws and drilling holes today?

Tom

Hole saws and drilling holes, you know, first thing you think you want to grab when you're drilling a hole is a speed bit or a spade bit because they drill so fast.

Right. -Tom

All right? You can drill maybe up to an inch and a half. I don't think they have them any bigger than that, or you can drill a real small hole. The problem with these, though, you're not going to get a real neat hole, not clean going in and definitely not clean going out.

Kevin

Yeah. You're going to blow out the back.

Tom

But it will drill fast. It'll drill fast.

Kevin

Yeah. Okay, so if you want something a little finer or a little bigger, go to the hole saw.

Tom

The hole saw, right. Now, the hole saw, think about it. It's just basically got the... It's a saw that's bent in a circle, and it comes in all different sizes.

Kevin

Yeah.

Tom

And it's mounted to a arbor or a mandrel right here, and there are different-size mandrels for different-size circles.

Kevin

Okay. So this guy is a little simpler. This one has these little nubs and this base plate right there.

Tom

Right, and if you look at that, that slides up and down, and it's locked in place by this nut right here.

Kevin

Right.

Tom

So what you do is, you take the hole saw, and you screw it on the mandrel right there. Then I have to back it out just like that until it meets the hole that I can then push that into.

Kevin

So it's going to spin it well, but it's not going to tighten this to the arbor.

Tom

Right, so I need to lock that down so this doesn't pull out with this nut. Again, it doesn't require a lot of pressure. Just make it nice and hand-tight. All right. So now when you put this in the drill, this will drill a hole......and it won't spin without this turning.

Kevin

Which means that this isn't going to cinch down supertight and get you into a position where you can never get it off.

Right. -Kevin

So a finer cut, lots of different sizes right here, and I'm looking at these two right here. The red one is clearly more coarse, whereas the white one has got a finer tooth.

Tom

Much more aggressive, and the benefit to this is, you're going to drill through a piece of wood, and let's say you've got some metal in there or a nail. You'll cut the nail. The trick to drilling a hole saw is, is when you're drilling this into wood, and depending on the wood, if it's pine or sappy or anything like that, the wood will jam up and fill these holes in between the teeth, so you've got to back it out, clean the wood off, push it back in, but when you do that, you got to be careful

because these get very hot. -Kevin

All right. So let's talk about some drilling because I'm sure you got some techniques for us.

Tom

Yeah. Yeah, they can -- They're pretty easy to drill, but I don't like to drill it at a real high, high speed. Some cases, you're going to wander up and down with your speed and work it. So this bit right here will guide the drill, so it won't wander when I first start.

Mm-hmm. -Tom

After I get into it, it won't matter about that drill except it'll put a point hole on the other -- a little hole on the other end, so I can drill it like this. I can also take a hole saw like that, okay? Drill right down through. Feel it. All right. So there's the drill. It's just breaking through right there, so now I take the drill, and I would drill it from the other side.

Kevin

So you can see that we've got just the pilot hole coming through.

Tom

Right, so if I drilled all the way through, I'd get blowout, so I might get some splintering like this on the other side. By flipping it over, I can now line that hole up on the other side exactly right, take my time, turn the drill on, not too much force. Let the drill work. Let the drill do the work. Rock it back and forth just slightly.

Kevin

Hmm.

Tom

And I have my plug right there, and I have a neat hole on this side and a clean hole on the other side.

Kevin

Right. Cool. All right. Well, good information, Tommy, nice to know that you got the tool in the kit and also nice to know how to use it.

Sure is. -Kevin

Thank you.

Tom

Thank you.

Kevin

Oh, Richard, I love it!

Richard

Welcome to the laboratory.

Kevin

What are we talking about today?

Frozen pipes. -Kevin

Ugh, disasters.

Richard

Now, we live in a cold climate, so we tend to build for it. We protect against it, but there are places in this country where there's a sudden cold snap, and all of a sudden, water is coming out of every place it shouldn't.

Kevin

No matter where it happens, it's always a huge mess.

Richard

Right, so we got this little mock-up demonstrator here. Here is the copper water pipe, and we're going to try to freeze this pipe, and when water freezes, it expands by about 9% when it changes its state from water to ice.

Kevin

Right, yeah.

Richard

But that's not enough to make most pipes burst.

Kevin

What, the ice isn't?

Richard

No. It's the pressure that that expansion of water has caused downstream, so if this grows by 9%, it's now going to compress this little bit of water that's in here. You can build up that pressure inside here as high as 25,000 psi.

Kevin

What?

Richard

Absolutely. It's the pressure that's going to make the thing go crazy, not just the 9% growth.

Holy smokes. -Richard

So what we got here, I'm going to insulate right here. Here is a pressure gauge. This represents the cold water supply to the house or the bathroom group, to a kitchen.

Kevin

And we're at... it looks like 60 psi or so, which is normal, right?

Richard

Right. Yeah, 40 to 60 pounds pressure is typical.

Kevin

Okay.

Richard

So now we're going to use compressed air.

Kevin

Oh, yep. It's going up. Wow. It's going up fast. Look at that. That's just in a couple of seconds right there. Bam!

Richard

So, look, it's keeping that...

Kevin

Three -- 10 seconds into it.

Richard

It goes right beyond the range of the gauge.

Kevin

And this is potentially before we even have a full ice block.

Richard

Right, right. So I have a recollection of when I was a young apprentice. We got sent to a house that the neighbor had saw the ice was coming down the front steps, so I go to the front door, and I get out an ice pick, and I start chipping away at the front door to try and get into the house because so much water has come out,

and I hear a boom inside. -Kevin

Yeah.

Richard

Now, I finally get the door open to come in, and I look, and at the far end of this room

was a radiator like this. -Kevin

No way.

Richard

And this is 25 feet away. I walk in the front door, and I see a shard of that radiator stuck into the side of the stair hall going up here. If I had been 2 minutes earlier, it would've been a different show.

Kevin

Three generations of plumbers, not four. But it blew up a cast-iron radiator.

Richard

Absolutely, absolutely, so it really made me understand the power of this 25,000 psi expansion.

Kevin

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, a little copper pipe is absolutely no match for it.

Richard

There's no match for it. So now, I need people to really visually understand what happens though. When this thing freezes in this little pipe, and we have full city water pressure...

Kevin

So we've got a split here caused either by the block of ice or more likely the pressure caused right there.

That's right. -Kevin

The blockage goes away because the ice melts or something.

Richard

Yeah, yeah. So I thought I would do a little demonstration. Imagine you are there when it finally bursts.

Kevin

You're going to open this?

Absolutely. -Kevin

All right.

Richard

So ready? Here we go. This is 60 pounds of pressure.

Kevin

Oh!

Chuckles

Richard

Okay? That would fill your house. I'm going to -- Let me shut this off.

And that's the first rule. -Kevin

Right.

Richard

You got to actually find a place to be able to have this shutoff, so this is one right here, but in a panic, when you got water coming, you need to find a control point, so somewhere in the building, there's the main water shutoff. It might look like this, or it looks like this. This one you turn clockwise, and this one you turn to this position. What we always love to do for any house is to put a main water shutoff tag, because in a panic, you got to be able to find the right control valve. Once you get it shut off, then you call a plumber, and you get it repaired. But the other question is, is how do you prevent it? So, you know, they make all kinds of pipe insulations like this. Generally, it's split, so you can open it up and put it on after the fact and insulate those pipes, but many times, those pipes are out in places you can't get at them. You know, think about a kitchen cabinet. Often, the sink is right at the window. The hot and cold are right behind it, so one little tip is to open up the kitchen cabinets in an attempt to get a little bit of heat in there to keep it from freezing.

Mm-hmm. Right. -Richard

Now, the other thing you can do is to actually relieve the pressure so that that extraordinary pressure won't build up.

Kevin

25,000 psi.

Richard

Correct, so using our demo again right here, so you got this pressure gauge, and let's simulate that this is actually a kitchen faucet or a faucet.

Kevin

So what are you going to do? You're going to bring the pressure back up by freezing it again?

Richard

I build it back up.

Kevin

Okay.

Richard

So here is our freeze again.

Just crack that faucet. -Kevin

So coming up to 80.

Richard

Go ahead,

crack it. -Kevin

I'm cracking it.

I'm cracking it. -Richard

Come on. All right. So just that little release would be enough, you know, so...

Kevin

Wow.

Richard

The rule is, if you're in cold, cold night, and you think it might freeze, find the farthest faucet away, hot and cold, just let them drip a little bit

into the sink for the night. -Kevin

Got it. Great information, Richard, and I love the demonstration, tells the whole story. Nice job,

professor. -Richard

All right.

Kevin

Oh!

Chuckles

Kevin

Ian

Mark, welcome to our home.

Mark

All right. Thanks for having me.

Ian

We are glad that you are here. My wife and I love DIY projects, and we moved into this house about 3 years ago.

Mark

Okay.

Ian

And we've done a few things around the house, but one of the things we've been hesitating on actually tackling is this fireplace.

All right. -Ian

It's one of the reasons that we love the house is this wood-burning fireplace, but the inspector noted a few issues when we originally had the house inspected when we bought it, and one of the things he said was that this crack between the hearth and the firebox was a potential issue.

Mark

Okay. Well, I'm going to agree with the inspector. The firebox is right here. It's very close to this crack, so when the wood is burning, you're going to get burnt wood. You're going to get embers that can possibly sneak into that crack, and just because I know how these houses are framed, I know that the wood is very close, so if you do happen to have an ember or something sneak down into that crack,

you're going to ignite a fire. -Ian

Mm-hmm.

Mark

So you want to be careful of that.

Ian

I see. One of the things we were hoping with this project, too, is that it might be a good opportunity to upgrade the aesthetic of the hearth. Perfect opportunity to do that. This material is called terra-cotta. It's very, very prevalent in this area in the time period between, say, 1910 and 1940. Giving this a fresh update might be a positive thing.

Great. -Mark

All right. So the first thing I'm going to want to do, though, is get downstairs and look at the subhearth to make sure it's intact or if it has a problem.

Ian

Sure. Well, we can go take a look.

Mark

Let's go.

Ian

Okay, Mark, so here we are under the fireplace.

Mark

Okay, so I'm seeing a lot of things that I expected to see. The framing is proper. You can see that. You have nice floor joists. They actually do some box-out framing and return the joist into the house, but look at this. This is what the inspector was talking about. He was worried about this wood. It's usually pulled after the hearth is cured, so if this were new construction, we would form it up just as they have. We would mix concrete. We would throw it into the subhearth. That would support our finished tile, which is the terra-cotta, and after everything was set up, we would come back, and we would pull this form. The crack that we were discussing is right here, so you can see how close it is to the wood. That's no good, so once we're done, and everything is cured, we're going to come back down here and rip this wood out, and when you look up, all you'll see is concrete.

I see. -Mark

All right? So why don't we get started upstairs with the tile? And then we'll find out what we have, and we can get going.

Okay. -Mark

All right? So, Ian, what I've given you is a 3-pound sledgehammer. This is a cold chisel. Look at that edge, so that's the cutting edge, and all I'm going to ask you to do is come across this tile just like that, bust that out. I'm going to have you start here because there's no joint, so that means you have a relief spot to go to, and once you clean this out, both of us will start going to any tile that we can get.

Great. -Mark

All right? All right. Clear that out. You want to just go like that and then down.

Ian

Just keep it straight down?

Mark

Yeah. Straight down. Try that. There you go. Great. All right. So now you removed one tile. That means you're going to be able to go in any direction underneath the tile to pop it up.

Ian

Okay.

Mark

There you go. All right. Went pretty easy.

Really quick. -Mark

Yeah. Last tile. All right. Good news. The subhearth seems to be in good condition. For a couple reasons, I know that. Number one, this is just an old-fashioned mud job which accepted the terra-cotta tile. I don't see any cracking, so that indicates to me that the subhearth, which is the concrete, is in good condition. So the other way I can tell is, when I tap, I just can feel how solid it is, and what I'm listening for is just to make sure there's no hollow sound. If there was a hollow sound, maybe the mud job is compromised, but I don't feel anything, and I don't see anything, so it's probably time to get going with the tile.

That's great news. -Mark

All right. Let's get going. All right. So what do you have there, 60?

60. -Mark

All right. So we're just trying to find our center, which is 30. I'll go with the C, for center, and then a straight line. So to start the layout, all we do, get our two tiles up against the wood, so, Ian, we ended up using a ceramic gray slate tile. I think it's an improvement. What about you?

Ian

I agree. I love it. The proportions match our fireplace, and I love the color.

Mark

Yeah, so that's what I think is great, too, is, like you said, I'm glad we used something longer rather than shorter. It helped with the layout. So we're going to set these in a running bond pattern using the spacers so we get consistent joints, and all we're going to do is start from the front of the hearth and work our way back because that's where our cut was. For a running bond, we usually end up with half pieces at the end, so it goes half, full, half, full, and those are pretty easy cuts to make, and again, the important thing is going to keep the joints consistent which is what we're going to use the spacers for.

Ian

Notch side?

Mark

Notch side, yep. You're doing great. There you go. So the notches on the old grout really are going to benefit us because it's going to grab the new thinset that we apply, and it's just going to give a stronger base for the new tile. I'll hold your space. What I want to do is, I want to dig out that crack because it's actually not part of the subhearth. It's part of the grout from the old tile, so if we dig it out and make sure we pack it very tightly with this thinset, we're going to cover the fact that we did have that break.

Ian

That's great.

Mark

All right. So we've done about as much as we can do today. We have a couple other things to do. Grouting is one of them. We have to wait 24 hours for that thinset to set up, but after that, you should be able to grout. You good with that?

Ian

I think I can take care of that.

Mark

Okay. Great. The other thing we have to do is go downstairs. Remember that form work that was under the subhearth?

Yeah. -Mark

To be code-compliant, we do have to pull that, but I want to wait about a week for everything to set up, get nice and solid, and after that, you rip that down. Then you're code-compliant, and you'll be ready for a fire.

Ian

That's great. Well, we love the look of the new fireplace and the hearth and what it does to the room, and we just can't thank you enough for your help.

Thanks for having me. -Ian

Thanks.

Mark

All right.

Kevin

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

Tom

I'm going to teach this young, aspiring woodworker how to build a dog-dish stand. Nice job.

Man

I'll show you the options for wiring a portable generator like this to your home.

Richard

There was a day that every house in this neighborhood had a gas lantern like this. I'm heading to St. Louis to bring one back.

Ross

And when an appliance breaks, do you repair or replace it?