Basement waterproofing and crawl space repair in DE

Cinco DE Mayo

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:38:22 -0400

DryZone Delaware and Maryland’s largest waterproofing company celebrated Cinco De Mayo on May 4, 2012. We have a very diverse company Heather Anderson, DryZone’s Quality Assurance Manager, was quoted saying, so we had the idea to celebrate with our Latino employees. The holiday of Cinco De Mayo, The 5th Of May, commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. It is primarily a regional holiday celebrated in the Mexican state capitol and throughout the state of Puebla, with some limited recognition in other parts of Mexico, and especially in U.S. cities with a significant Mexican population. It is not, as many people think, Mexico’s Independence Day, which is actually September 16.

We love our employees they are a great bunch of guys, they are the best at fixing basement when rain begins to fill it up or if you have mold or high humidity in your crawlspace. Edwin a newer employee to DryZone said he has worked for many companies in Sussex County Delaware when he moved here from Puerto Rico a few years ago and has never had an employeer treat their guys with as much respect as he gets here at DryZone.

Have DryZone out to fix your basement or crawlspace, we cover all of De and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, including Dover, DE -Bridgeville, De-Eden, MD-Chestertown, MD

A what kind of escape?

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:18:32 -0400

Any basement that is going to be finished in Delaware must have an egress or fire escape, if you choose to place a bed room in the basement than you will need that egress in that bed room, and if two or more bed rooms are built in the basement then you will have to have one for each bed room. We are asked many times by homeowners why they need an egress, our answer is simple if a fire takes out the stairs to the first floor how will you get out in a fire. Total Basement Finishing by DryZone can install as many egresses as you need

It starts by first digging a large hole next to the foundation, and our rock wall is then installed where we will be cutting your foundation so the new window can me mounted. All of our products have been approved for residential and commercial basement finishing application and come with nationally baked warranties.

I hope that you will never need to use the new basement fire escape, but if the need ever happens you can rest assured that by choosing DryZone to have this life saving product installed in your home, you will be able to leave a burning home safely and securely. DryZone installs these and many more basement finishing products in every town on Delmarva, including Middletown, DE- Smyrna, DE- Easton, MD and Salisbury, MD

What is so smart about these jacks

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:38:48 -0400

Bethany Beach, Delaware April 5 2012 3:30 in the afternoon Foundation Supportworks by DryZone receives a call from a homeowner in Bear Trap Dunes, who has structural problems in their home! It seems that many of the doors and windows in the home have “racked” or went out of square, making them stick or not open or shut at all. This problem has been happening for a few years now but has really gotten worse this spring, the homeowners were at their wits end, and searched the internet for a company who could fix this type of problem.

As the only real foundation repair company on Delmarva, DryZone went to the home to perform an initial inspection that is free. Bill the inspector for DryZone soon found the problem, you see the concrete piers that go down the middle of the home had shifted, and that was making the floors above it sink and that “sinking” made the doors and windows not operate correctly. Bill recommended seven new Smart Jack crawlspace supports; these jacks once installed transferred the weight of the home onto the new piers, and then lifting the floors began. After a short time, the Bethany Beach home was brought back to a level position.

DryZone is the only Foundation Supportworks dealer for all of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, we offer a 25 year nationally backed warranty, and completely trained crews, so you will never have to worry about who is working on your home. Homeowners from as far north as Wilmington, DE to as far south as Pocomoke, MD have trusted DryZone for all of their structural issues.

Things You Should Ask A Contractor - Part 1

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:33:05 -0400

Bill Anderson: Well good morning folks this is Bill Anderson from Under Your Home with DryZone. Jason Harmon actually had to go away this weekend but I do have somebody here with me that I've wanted to get on the radio for a while and his name is Kenny Sharpless, he's our production manager. Kenny, how are you doing?

Kenny Sharpless: Good, thanks.

Bill Anderson: Kenny, a lot of times we talk about our service and sales department along with all the different things that homeowners expect from us. I kind of wanted to get you in here to talk about exactly what happens once the salesman leaves the door, where does he go from there and what should our homeowners see when they think of DryZone after they've already signed the contract?

Kenny Sharpless: Well before they see us the paperwork has to go from the salesman to the office and eventually I'll get the paperwork. Now once I get the paperwork I go through it, for any discrepancies and issues that the guys might encounter after I look through the paperwork I'll sit down with each foreman individually and have a meeting with them to go over the paperwork. Making sure they understand the paperwork and that’s when I'll send them out to the house. They then go set up at the homeowner's house, meet the homeowner, introduce themselves, probably introduce the helpers that they have with them, get started with the job, go down the list of paperwork item by item so the homeowner and the foreman are both on the same page, that everybody understands what's going on, that there isn't anything that got dropped.

Bill Anderson: A few weeks ago we had talked with Heather, our service manager and she talked about our Wow service, what that meant and the things that really make it WOW. Well we also have Wow service in our production department. So when the guys get out there what's the first impression that we should get from the homeowner?

Kenny Sharpless: The first impression they should get is that we're an organized company, we're put together and we keep our trucks looking good, keep everything looking clean; all our guys are in uniforms, look clean and look ready to work.

Bill Anderson: Look like they belong there?

Kenny Sharpless: Yes, they look like they know their jobs, they don't look like guys we just picked up off the street, threw in a truck and said "Have a nice day." We spend a lot of time on our guys training. We'll go over that a little bit more.

Bill Anderson: Well I know you and I we had spent a lot of time when we started actually researching the whole idea of putting our guys in uniforms and what we wanted it to look like. Also the story that I always tell people about was when you and I went down to a sister company in North Carolina and when we got there this company really had a small building, I mean it's probably a quarter of the size of ours and they had how many trucks in there? Like 10, 15 trucks.

Kenny Sharpless: At least a dozen or so.

Bill Anderson: So it was absolutely organized chaos, all these guys were running around and the biggest thing that we said was we thought our guys actually did a better job in the morning of getting themselves ready getting out but they looked professional because they were in uniform.

Kenny Sharpless: Our guys are more organized but they looked more organized because their guys just looked like robots - they were all the same look, they look organized.

Bill Anderson: A lot of times companies actually pay for people's uniforms but our guys pay for their own uniforms which was something that we all sat down and talked about even the helpers agreed that everybody should be in uniform to make us look professional.

Kenny Sharpless: We feel like our guys should have a choice in what's going on with the company. DryZone's a family company, we're all one big family and we feel that the guys should have a choice on what they look like and how they present themselves.

Bill Anderson: Like Steve who is one of our service guys, in the summer time he actually had the shorts go along with his uniform so that way he was a little bit more comfortable in the field because he was jumping in and out of crawl spaces all day so it's easier for him to wear that so he wasn't really super hot or super cold because when you get down in crawl spaces which is always nice and cold, right? At least in the summer time anyway, nice and warm in the winter. What do you think is one of the biggest attributes that your guys give to our company? We don't hire sub-contractors and that's one of the first questions I think we get from homeowners nowadays, is "Do you hire subcontractors?" We're all saying "No, no, no, no, these are all our guys, we pay taxes, we do all these things with them, and we buy their health insurance or vacations. Over the time you've been with us -- and you're one of our longest employees that have been around - what changes have you seen over the years from the guys and what really do they do to stand out from other companies that you've worked for?

Kenny Sharpless: The guys themselves are a good group of guys, their personalities mix well with everybody, we don't have any bitter apples in the team. I think that's probably one of our biggest attributes, the fact that we have a great group of guys. I wouldn't want to let any of them go I'd take a dozen more just like them.

Bill Anderson: The first thing somebody says when we have a new guy who starts is "If you can get through the first week or two without getting fired you're probably going to make it" because we're real tough on applicants who come in the shop, right?

Kenny Sharpless: Well we expect a certain type of person that we're willing to train also we're willing to make that person who we're looking for but they've got to have something for us to get started with so we have gone through a few people here and there to get the right candidate.

Bill Anderson: One of the biggest sayings that I've always had was "You work for the job that you want, not the one you have. You work for the paycheck you want, not the one you have" and you've definitely epitomized that with this. You started out as the third man on the crew many, many moons ago and you worked yourself all the way up to be a production manager. Sooner or later we're going to start to have an assistant production manager underneath you because when you start doing the kind of volume that we do, I don't know about you, but when I first started our company I used to know every single one of our homeowners. Now I feel bad like I was in a home show a few weeks ago and somebody came up to me and they were just like "Oh you guys did such a great job. Thank you, thank you, thank you" and I'm like "Listen, I'm not trying to be rude but who are you?" and they were like "Oh we understand Billy, we know you guys do a lot of houses" and I felt bad because I used to have that personal connection with every single homeowner and I don't get it anymore. I know that you're kind of going into the same place. You were at least at every single job once a day or once a week while it was going on; now I know there are a lot of jobs that you just don't even get to go see. There's just a name associated with somebody. How do we make those homeowners that truly are sometimes just at least a name still feel special? How do we control that quality?

Kenny Sharpless: Honestly I think it falls back on the guys again, like I said our guys are topnotch guys. They're very personable; when they meet the homeowners the homeowners always have a great experience with our guys, easy to talk to and will do anything for you. Which goes back to our Wow Service and Wow for us. This is anything from moving a rock out of your driveway to adjusting a homeowner’s stove because we adjusted Smart Jacks under her house which caused the stove to be not leveled. So to me part of our Wow Service was me going in there and spending five minutes in adjusting her stove.

Bill Anderson: When you talk about Wow Service we actually truly empower our people. I was talking with you before we had gotten to the radio station about how there was a job that happened this week and we had to take the discharge out another 10 feet so it would actually work because there was a little bit of a crown in the ground. The foreman said "You know what? I don't care, we're going to run it farther" and a few weeks ago when Heather was here she had talked about how there's actually a monetary number associated with that, so Pier had actually put that extra discharge in with no cost to the homeowner to make sure that the system worked the way it should have. I think that's really one of our large things that we try to do with our guys so they are capable of making those types of decisions in the field. If it's not going to work we need to do whatever it takes to make it work.

Kenny Sharpless: Like I said we send them away to Nebraska and Connecticut, like you said before we are going down to various other companies to sit in with them and learned some stuff so our guys get plenty of training. This way they very capable of handling questions or concerns and then with the Wow stuff our guys will do anything, Wow's whatever it takes to make the job good and done.

Bill Anderson: I was sitting there with a homeowner this morning that had some crawl space work done and she was having some issues with her foundation. She was actually getting a lot of sagging on the inside of her crawl space and we started talking about the quality of the work because they went out and got a generic contractor to do their crawl space remediation work. They just went down to Lowe's and bought some corrugated pipe, some really cheap drain tiles and French drains. When they came in there with their plastic, it was just some really cheap plastic, along with a sump pump from Lowe's that was plastic which will probably burn up in a year. The sad part is I actually did the numbers for it and it would have actually cost him less money to have us go in there to encapsulate it than it would have the other guy. Unfortunately part of what was happening was they ran their liner up overtop the sill plate and when you do that you're taking all the ground moisture and funneling it towards the wood so when this happens you start having wood rot, mold, termites and everything else. You and I were recently at a house that if the homeowners would have taken care of this five- ten years ago and you know where I'm talking about, that house inGeorgetown, it wouldn't have been as bad as it was. Why don't you explain exactly how bad it was because I had you crawling underneath there with me?

Kenny Sharpless: Yes, like you say a lot, it doesn't take long for a good problem to go bad but for a bad problem to get worse it can happen overnight. In that case if she had gotten us in there five years ago and had her crawl space encapsulated the work that's going to have to be done now could have been salvaged. Also she probably wouldn't have to spend a third of the amount of money that she's probably going to have to spend now to fix the damaged floor joists, the banner board that's rotten and all that's all due to the moisture in the crawl space.

Bill Anderson: The sad part is the insurance company isn't paying anything for it because this was an ongoing condition; it wasn't like it flooded because you just don't get a flood one time causing your floors to rot out. It may have flooded and there was enough moisture down there over time but it takes a while for wood to rot out. We actually have a little mold type farm in our office that we use for home shows. So we have this great big Tupperware thing that they use in restaurants to make salads and pastas. We have wood in there along with sheet rock, paper and some of our different inorganic materials we use. It takes a while so I'm putting hot water in this thing every day and we actually had mold grow. We then took a coffee cup put some coffee in it and let the mold grow in the coffee then took the mold out to actually give it like a starter culture. I put a lot of mold in this thing and it's still taking forever. The sheet rock is just now getting some mold on it but it's taken a good long while and this has been the last couple of months to really get a lot of mold on top of the wood and everything. Like I said I'm inducing boiling hot water every day and it stays wet for a day but we keep putting it in there to get that nice hot warm temperature so it's not like this wood rot happens overnight; it's going to happen over time. When you start looking at your girders where you can grab it the main supporting beam is your girder when you grab it and it falls apart in your hands.

Kenny Sharpless: Disintegrates?

Bill Anderson: It disintegrates which is a bad thing and there's nothing worse than the backbone of your house falling apart. So when we talk about getting these things done when you first buy a house, it's brand new, it's supposed to be in good shape. So why wait until it gets bad to go fix some of these problems.

Kenny Sharpless: I've built residential homes for 10 years so I kind of know a lot of the new building practices, the way it should and shouldn’t be done and since I've worked for DryZone I really now learned the way it should be compared to the way it shouldn't be. A lot of builders call it a conditioned crawlspace meaning a crawlspace with vents in there to let the outside air in and that's not right it’s not what a conditioned crawlspace is. What we do is initially is a conditioned crawl space.

Bill Anderson: When we use the right material for it anybody can keep a roof dry with a tarp but wouldn't you just rather have tarp papers than shingles and everything else that it normally takes. That's what is happening you get these Chuck in a truck in there and they're essentially basically trying to put a tarp down there and pass it off as something that is going to work. I think we're actually up against the break here but when we get back I really want to talk to you about what you've seen in the field from these other different companies that try to do what we do and what kind of problems you've seen that actually cost the homeowners.

Kenny Sharpless: Okay.

Bill Anderson: So folks we'll be right back and like I said this is Bill Anderson from Under Your Home with DryZone.

Bill Anderson: All right folks, we are back. I appreciate you being here and Kenny I absolutely appreciate you filling in for Jason. I think you'll actually be here the next couple of weeks doing this. Before the break we started talking about wood rot, mold and everything else that seems more often than not that we'll go into a house that was done like maybe six years ago or ten years ago when this whole conditioned crawlspace thing started really gearing up and everybody got into it. What have you seen? Like I know I was down there with one of our inspectors in a house that we didn't do that they took the liner, their version of CleanSpace, and ran it up the wall overtop of the insulation and they took those little green nails that they use for tieback. What do you call them? Button caps?

Kenny Sharpless: Button caps?

Bill Anderson: Button caps, yes, and they used that to push it down the liner into the insulation to hold it into place. Then they took some Batt insulation and jammed it up in the banner board which draped it over top of their liner so when I got out of the crawl space the homeowner said "Listen, this system just doesn't seem to work right. I spent all this money" he's like "I didn't know you guys were here. I heard you guys on this radio station so I wanted you guys to come out and look at it because something's just not right." I went underneath there with the inspector and we started crawling around pulling some of that insulation down and all they did was roll it up on top, stuck that button cap in there and it wasn't even sealed. I mean I could pull the whole walls down with my pinky. The homeowner was livid, the company's now out of business.

Kenny Sharpless: All they've done is channel the moisture right up to the banner board.

Bill Anderson: You leave the three inches but they never sealed it so all they did was they tried to hide the poor workmanship that they did. So one of the biggest philosophies I have in life is "trust but verifies" and that's kind of what the homeowner was doing. Unfortunately the company was out of business. They were a landscaper, they were doing a whole lot of landscaping especially over the winter time, they said "Hey, I know, let's get into this crawl space thing because we see DryZone all over the place and they must be making money" so you can't beat that hard. So they went in there and did what they did and for whatever reason, I have no idea even who they were, we have a business name but that was it, they're out of business. Now the homeowners are out $5000-$10,000. To have it done right it's going to cost them a little bit of money to have it fixed. So the moral of the story is that sometimes you get what you pay for and I get the fact that homeowners don't know who to listen to, it all starts sounding the same. When you start looking at cars, TV's or if you even start looking at cruise lines. For instance my wife and I and my daughter were planning on going on our first cruise this year so I started looking at everything with my sister's going with us they're obsessing about it so now I'm obsessing about it which is a lot of fun. It all starts sounding the same this cabin number, that cabin number, this deck, that deck it all is the same. So who do you believe? Kenny I know that you don't see a lot of the sales process but you've seen the pre-mailers that we send out to homeowners. It has this thing that we talk about, things you should ask your contractor which I'd like to talk to you a lot about next week because this paper that we send out to you if you don't know what to ask a contractor it tells you what to ask. You don't even have to know what you're talking about.

Kenny Sharpless: That could keep you from getting your Chuck in the truck or your DryZone, that could get you somebody who's going to do the poor job on your house or that could get you somebody who's going to do the quality job and do it right.

Bill Anderson: Exactly, the last thing you want to do is spend a lot less on something that you really should have because if you go to McDonald's, you go to the guy who's selling hamburgers out of his truck on the street I bet you the guy selling hamburgers out of the truck on the street is probably lower, you can get it for like 35 cents or you can go do McDonald's and just spend 99 cents, get at least a double cheeseburger or whatever they have nowadays. I hate seeing homeowners when they're like "Listen, he did a good job for my neighbor" which is probably his first job and he really tried hard to do a good job and then he found out how hard it was and said "The heck with this, let's find some shortcuts." Because let's face it that's what at least a good amount of builders do. There are a lot of really great ones out there, I know of a few myself, like Jo Baulderstone, he's a great contractor down inRoyal OakinEaston. I really like him, I think he does a really good job, and he really studies and he actually - whenever we call him up he's like "Billy, listen, whatever it takes to make this the right way that's what we'll do, just do the best you can as far as price on me" and we always do, we're not the super huge company that's going to charge a million bucks, we truly do believe that if we keep our prices low that the people come to us.

Kenny Sharpless: A lot of places to me pay you go to a Mercedes, you buy the Mercedes name. With DryZone you're not just buying DryZone's name and what we offer, the quality or experience but you're also buying a product that is of that quality as well so you're not getting a cheaper quality product, you're getting the best quality product that's out there which is what I've seen on houses that I've gone into that other companies like us have done, that seems to be more or less what you see, the details. To me the devil's in the detail and when you go into somebody else's house that another contractor did and you see the little stuff the tape seams, the stuff that's really easy and small that should be taken care of at a glance of an eye that gets left and they just don't seem to care about it, that's not us. Our guys are once we get done we go through the house again and again to make sure that everything's done and it's done right.

Bill Anderson: To me that's all part of training, we've said it a million times on here how much we actually spend on training and what it takes to actually make it professionally. I haven't said it on too many of your production meetings but I do know that that's always the first thing you started with is "What do we do better than everybody else?" and every single week that I've been in there you have talked about it and everybody keeps reiterating this is why we're better. When I go to work for somebody I always want to work for the best company and that's the reason why, it seems like lately we've been getting more phone calls from people who were in "the conditioning crawlspace business" than we ever had before because all those other guys are going out of business and people are really starting to figure out that we are better than everybody else. A lot of times folks look at us and they're like "Well Billy you say you have a better product and it's at least as much if not better than the other homeowners. Why is that?" I look at it as the better you are at something the less expensive it should be because if you start specializing in something and you start learning how to make things go better. I mean the first time you pick or turn on a computer it takes a while for you to learn and to become efficient at it. We'll probably do what? 500- 700 homes this year?

Kenny Sharpless: Easily, yes.

Bill Anderson: Easily and eventually you get good at it, right? So when you have other companies in there that are pest control companies, I don't always mean to pick on the pest control companies because I know it's mean so I don't want any haters out there but pest control companies seem to think that because they're in their spraying their pest control stuff that they can start doing it. Now there are a lot of companies I mean a lot of pest control companies out there that don't. They're like "Listen, we're the bug guys; we will call in the specialists when we need it." When I'm underneath the house we could very easily tell the homeowners "Yes, we'll take care of your bugs while we're down here." However we don't because I don't want to get into the bug business. If we did that then I'm going to loose focus on what we do, even if we did, I could spray your house for bugs in 10 minutes and I can do it for like $20 with a can of Raid. It doesn't make it right but if I told you "Oh, it's the same stuff that all these other companies use" who are you to believe? So hopefully you're listening to these things because you should always ask your contractor for licenses which a lot of folks don't ask me whenever I go out to do inspections for homeowners. I have one guy who pulled out the sheet and he said "Bill" and then started going right down the list, he was like "Tell me about this, tell me about that." I pulled out the sheets so obviously I have the answers to it but the first question he asked was "Is your company licensed in that state that they work in?" So we work inDelawareandMarylandso basically we own the entire peninsula except for the bottom part ofVirginia. So I don't go intoPennsylvania, I don't go intoNew Jerseyand I don't go even on the western shore. When we work we have to have certain licenses through the state of Delaware, we have to have all of these different town licenses, but in Maryland your MHIC's, which is your Maryland Home Improvement Commission licensed there are companies that I've seen on TV, the radio and even in print ads that give you this MHIC number so I'm telling you right now they don't have one. It kills me because that's one of the things we're very proud about because it's not really easy and any idiot just can't go out there to get a license in Maryland which I love Maryland for that because they really have to show the state that they're a good company. We had to take tests, show our credit reports every year, show deeds to our houses and all that good stuff. Now if I had it right which I know I do, if a contractor screws up in your home in the state ofMarylandthey take care of you and then the state ofMarylandwill go after the contractor so the state ofMarylandwants to make sure that you have something there to get. So you have to have some type of a financial responsibility kind of a background for you to even have a license inMaryland. In New Castle County to get certain licenses, I was also talking to some of our electricians and plumbers that work for us and you just can't go to work in New Castle County, you have to have been in business for so long which I forget all the criteria but New Castle County's tough and I love it. The last few minutes we have here this morning I really want to focus in on our basement finishing products, and we had Burt Murray in here a few weeks ago who started talking about the things that we do and how it is a wonderful product but you deal with a lot more of the inspectors than I do so we call for all these different inspections that aren't even called for, right? Kind of talk about those a little bit would you?

Kenny Sharpless: Before getting started I usually have one of the inspectors meet me out at the house that we're actually doing the work on and that's just so that as well as me looking at it, Billy looking at it, I've got the inspector of that township, county, whatever it may be, I've got that inspector actually looking at what I'm working with and seeing if he sees anything that I'm unfamiliar with there that we need to be aware of. Most of the inspectors that I've talked to seem to appreciate that, they seem to appreciate that we're going to take the time and get with them ahead of time rather than start a project, running the issues, and then trying to fumble around trying to fix up. So they seem to appreciate the questions and the upfront concerns and comments.

Bill Anderson: We're trying to figure out the issues before the issues find us.

Kenny Sharpless: I tell a lot of our homeowners when I'm talking to them that DryZone to me isn't just a company that's here to fix your problem crawlspace, basement or whatever it is, but we try to be proactive as well as preventative." When we do our basements or when we do our jobs we actually try to think "Okay, what could the problem be with this system?" and then we try to solve it before it ever becomes a problem.

Bill Anderson: Yes, even in crawlspaces I know we always kind of focus in on crawlspaces but you have sewer lines and a lot of times they're laying right in the ground so we work really hard at getting those liners underneath that pipe so that way if there's ever a leak you know it and the plumber doesn't have to sit there and try to open up the liner and find out where it actually is and everything else. We really try to make sure that everything's exposed like the fist thing I know that the guys do when they get in a house is they tack up the wires because there's nothing worse than you spending all of this money and you say "Man, you know what? They did a great job except for the first day the guy pulled the cable wire out." So it was a great job but and I hate that but, I mean there's nothing worse to a reputation than having somebody say "You know what? They did a great job but..."

Kenny Sharpless: We want the homeowners to look in there and see a nice clean crisp look. When the clean space is in and finished that's ideally what you should have, you should have a nice clean crisp look.

Bill Anderson: When the basements are done you shouldn't really even know we were there.

Kenny Sharpness: The water issue being resolved.

Bill Anderson: Leaving the water issue being resolved, you'll see the nice pretty white plastic up two feet up the walls but other than that you have a brand new sump pump that looks like it's always been there so it blends right in. When we do foundation work you would never know we were there hopefully because that means your floors are straight and there are no huge gaping cracks in your foundation. With basement finishing you should know we were there, you should definitely go downstairs and say "Wow"! I know in a few weeks we're having an open house up in Bear for one of our homeowners and all of his neighbors are already coming down saying "Tell me when it is because I really want to talk to these guys because my basement doesn't look half as good as this, I spent twice as much getting it done, and it was just with dry wall that's going to get ruined."

Kenny Sharpless: I actually spent a lot of time up on that house and while I was outside working I'd be working with the guys and homeowners would stop and talk to me and ask me what we were doing there because they'd see our lettered trucks and what not and I would just go into detail, start explaining to them stage by stage what we were doing and a lot of homeowners that was their reaction, they were just at awe, and then once I showed them the material that was what really set it up. The one neighbor across the street was telling me that he's seen most of his neighbor's basements and out of all the basements he's seen the homeowner that we just finished has the nicest basement and he was shocked, he was running around town to the rest of his neighbors. I think in one day I probably had four to five homeowners stop by just to see what was going on and see what it looked like.

Bill Anderson: Kenny, the time on the wall says this was actually a pretty quick half hour. Listen folks my name once again is Bill Anderson, I'm being joined by Kenny Sharpless. Kenny you're actually going to join me next week, correct?

Kenny Sharpless: Yes, I'm going to try.

Bill Anderson: What I'd like to do is give you our websites again so if you have any of these issues and any of these questions, even if you just want some advise. You can always catch us on DryZone.com\the duck. So Kenny I appreciate it and folks we will talk to you next weekend!

Electricity in Finished Basements

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:56:26 -0400

Male Speaker: It's time for Under Your Home with DryZone. DryZone in Milton, Delaware -your complete source for basement and crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing; 24-hour service.

Brad Wazlavek: Good morning everyone. This is Brad with DryZone here today with Bill as usual and Adam as well from J&A Electric. He joined us last week and you'll be joining us again today.

Bill Anderson: Definitely, guys listen I told you last week I appreciate you getting up this early with me. I know it's not fun getting up this early on a Sunday, but everybody that we've ever had on the show they've all been real nice about it. They've all been real troopers about getting in here and making sure these homeowners get as much information as they can. Guys last week after the show we started talking about our TBF products. We said we definitely wanted to bring it up this week. But before we do that I know last week we had been neglectful about getting out numbers and ways to get a hold of us, so Adam, since you're still our special guest this week I'm going to let you go ahead and start it off.

Adam: J&A Electric (302) 943-9894 and on the web at JAElectric@aol.com.

Bill Anderson: Okay, so that's your email.

Brad Wazlavek: Well basically you can get a hold of us at DryZone.com. My last name is Wazlavek, it's a little hard to spell, and I’ll go ahead and give you Bill's email address, that's bill@dryzone.com, pretty simple, easy to do. You can get a hold of us any time and we'll be happy to answer any questions and hopefully set you up with a pre-inspection, we'll come out and take a look at the house.

Bill Anderson: You're kind of our resident TBF expert now so why don't you go ahead and start talking about TBF and the electrical part of it. What should homeowners expect? What does code say? I mean that's a big thing that folks need to know is, what does code say because we have to follow that.

Brad Wazlavek: Well basically TBF stands for Total Basement Finishing so our inorganic basement finishing products - we do floor, ceiling, and walls and we've got Adam here today actually because he's done a few of these houses with us. He's taught me some things about the electrical codes and the way that it's installed. I actually didn't know these things, so I'm glad that he's here, he can answer some questions that way. First off Adam let's talk about the breaker boxes or the outlet boxes that we use. I'm sure everyone's familiar with those blue boxes that you get at like home improvement stores. Those are actually rated 15-minute fire rating which means after 15 minutes they're pretty much useless, they just melt. And the ones that we use are porcelain and they have a two-hour fire rating. Now in your experience as an electrician what would you say is like the biggest difference because that might just seem like to somebody that doesn't really know they're like "Well 15 minutes is still a long time." Does it really make that big a difference?

Adam: Yes, I believe so, the construction of the porcelain boxes is much better. They're more heavy duty and they seem to hold up a little better than the plastic boxes.

Brad Wazlavek: That's good to know. Actually up in Connecticut at our home office they have fire tested all of this stuff and I've been out there several times and seen it in a display case and you can really tell the difference. After 15 minutes of that box cooking essentially it's basically just a mound of goo while our porcelain one's are a little scorched, still in perfect shape. And from my experience, or at least my thought would be if there is a short in electrical box you're going to want that time to be able to know - that's basically the biggest difference there for me anyway.

Bill Anderson: You know it's funny, I was sitting there talking with Gary, my business partner, and in the men's bathroom we have a lot of things plugged into an outlet in there. I went in there, it was sometime last week anyway, and I said "Have you noticed? I think we had a fire in the bathroom," and he was like "Yes, Billy I saw it. It's okay, we got it out and taken cared of because I know you're doing a lot of stuff in our building now." But this extension cord was plugged into it and now I guess somebody had pulled it out, but the whole socket, the part where you actually plug it into was like black and I was like "Oh my God, there was a fire." You couldn't see it when the actual extension cord was plugged into it. Why does that do that? I know you haven't really - I assume you haven't seen it yet - but why does something like that happen and is it actually dangerous?

Adam: Yes, it is dangerous. It sounds like basically it was overloaded - tsk, tsk.

Bill Anderson: You know what we had going on?

Adam: It's basically from arching, from overloading a receptacle, from plugging too much into it, too much of a current draw will cause that and your wire expands and contracts and on that device it's more vulnerable because it's stripped underneath the terminals. While it's expanding and contracting it's drawing all of that current and heating up.

Brad Wazlavek: Going along with the TBF products, again Total Basement Finishing, I definitely recommend everyone go online, look at Total Basement Finishing because if you're thinking about finishing your basement it's definitely a complete alternative to what you might have normally thought about with your dry wall or your fiberglass and fabric panels, things like that. The nice advantage to our system is that it's 100% inorganic which means it will never hold mold, it does not absorb water at all. Actually there's a really neat video if you in YouTube, look up splash video. It's about three to four minutes long. We actually throw a bunch of wall products in a pool and see what happens in the worst case scenario. A lot of the homeowners that I go to talk with about doing their basement, they've seen this online before I even get there and they're very impressed with it. So, I definitely recommend that; even if you're not even thinking about finishing your basement it's a very entertaining video. If you're curious to see what happens if you throw a piece of dry wall on a pool it's going to let you know. What I like to talk about next is I've run into a bit of an issue here. Where you have a breaker box and say, there are four slots that are still open. When you finish the basement typically how many slots do you need when you finish a basement electrical wise?

Adam: Standard would be anywhere between six and eight depending on the size of the basement obviously.

Brad Wazlavek: Most of our basements they're not astronomically huge. Most people just want like a family room. We've done a lot of man caves lately; which I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with that term in Delaware, but definitely six to eight is a good thing. I usually take a picture, when I'm in the basement, of the actual label of the box because as far as I know different breaker boxes have different - sometimes there might be like dead slots, or you just can't use them. How does that work?

Adam: That's more typical in older panels to where you don't have the space, it's more of in appearance, but actually the boss switch is where the breaker snaps onto and it's unavailable for use.

Brad Wazlavek: And the reason I bring this up is because again, if you're thinking about finishing your basement and you look in your box you're probably going to need some sort of an additional panels, sub-panels is what we call it, to handle all that extra electricity. It's not like you can just plug your lights into a standard outlet in your basement. You're wiring a whole new room in your house. You want to make sure it's done right. The next thing I really kind of want to touch on - a lot of people have a smoke detector in their basement and from my understanding the code says that you need a smoke detector in each finished room. Which means if we're putting say a bathroom down there you're going to need a new smoke detector, you're going to need an existing smoke detector, basically each room needs one. That's my understanding.

Brad Wazlavek: Maybe, I just misunderstood the code. If you want one I definitely would recommend one but it's something that you'll definitely want some kind of smoke detector down there because if you're in the basement you don't want to get stuck down there during a fire.

Bill Anderson: I think common sense prevails and I know you do that anyway, Brad, you just automatically stick one in every room, but I think code - here's what to do with code - I mean Adam obviously you have to deal with code every day and so do we. Some of the codes are stupid.

Brad Wazlavek: It's also very vague.

Bill Anderson: Well it is.

Adam: It's misleading.

Bill Anderson: I believe that only time when you actually have to have one is at the bottom of your stairs and that's a combination of smoke detector and a carbon monoxide one.

Adam: Yes, a CO2 detector and they also must be tied to the upstairs, each bedroom and outside of a group of bedrooms by the building code.

Brad Wazlavek: So that's good, again, I'm glad we have a licensed electrician with us to let us know that kind of thing.

Bill Anderson: I still like the way you do it Brad and I'm going to promote your code the way you do it because let's face it - I've seen some of the dumbest things when people try to finish their basements. Like people will have a gas stove down there. I'm telling you, to get a gas stove in a basement you have to know Jesus. It's tough. It's smart to be like that because you don't need a fire source. I don't know why people put fireplaces down in their basements anyway. Like I told you like last week I believe in Murphy's Law. That's just a disaster waiting to happen, there are a lot of things you can do in a basement. We've done some beautiful basements, to some very normal ordinary basements; so it's a little playroom for the kids and the same question happens every time. "I want a kitchen down here." "Why do you want a kitchen and what exactly do you mean by a kitchen?" "Well we want to be able to have cold drinks" and I'm like "Okay, so you don't have to cook steaks, or anything down here?" and they're like "No." I'm like "Okay, let's just cut out the stove. You can put a microwave in there, you can have a regular refrigerator in there, you can even have a sink as long as you don't need to go bake a cake while in your basement, and you’re okay." That's where a lot of homeowners need to really think about what they're looking for in a basement, what they're trying to achieve in a basement because I know our code. I think it's a little bit different, Adam, than yours when we go to finished basements. We prefer to use for every 60 square feet --Brad

Wazlavek: --Sixty square feet of floor space or ceiling space we put a light.

Bill Anderson: Now code says it's one for every hundred I believe.

Adam: Right.

Bill Anderson: We just feel that it just doesn't make any sense to have a basement which is dark inherently with less lighting.

Brad Wazlavek: We found out that homeowners, when you end up putting one for every hundred square feet, they say let's just do the bare minimum to save money. They don't like the lighting source and they always ask for more lights. When I generally approach the homeowner about the lighting I say "Code says one for every hundred square feet, but we found that our homeowners in the past like more lighting and usually they're very receptive to that. Like you said, basements are inherently dark, not a lot of windows to begin with, and sometimes the one, gets covered up when you do the new construction; so they want more light.

Bill Anderson: And besides that, Adam you've never heard this yet, this is the coolest thing I've ever heard. Brad and I went up for training, I guess it was a couple of months ago, and it was for some different marketing training for some different total basement finishing training up in Connecticut where Basement Systems is located. And what was the coolest thing you ever learned about lights?

Brad Wazlavek: What I thought was cool, is something that was so simple when you think about it, and I see it every single day - the wall panels that we use are very neutral in color, it's a combination of off-white and beige, and you can actually change the color of the wall depending upon what kind of light you glow on or what kind of light you reflect on it.

Bill Anderson: And that's not with the diffusers and all that other good stuff, that's if you had a can light when you had a dimmer on it you turn it up all the way, you turn it one color. When you dim it it really takes - and I'm color blind but you could really sit there give it a different hue.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, fluorescent lights, if you have those, it's going to be a little brighter, if you have dimmer can lights it's going to be a little more like a yellowy, earthy tone. It's actually very neat because we come up against that objection every once in a while where somebody say "I like your walls but it's just the wrong color" and we say "Well look most walls are very neutral in color which is why we picked of-white and beige." If you change the lighting scheme you can actually change the color and the feel of the room which is really kind of cool when you think about it.

Bill Anderson: Like when you come to the south next time and how we have the little room up there like when you first come in to actually turn some lights on and off where you can actually see it's really neat. I kind of want to talk real quick, Adam, if I can, and actually we'll probably have to do it after we get back from break because Troy over there is telling me that we have to go to break here in a second. Why don't you go ahead and give out our numbers so that way homeowners can get a hold of us and then we'll take a break and then we'll come back.

Adam: Once again if you want to get a hold of DryZone on the web at DryZone.com. Email address like I said you can get a hold of Bill any time. It's bill@dryzone.com.

Brad Wazlavek: And our local number is 9302) 684-5034 so Adam -Adam: J&A Electric and you can get a hold of us at (302) 943-9894.Bill Anderson: Now listen when we get back from break like I said I want to talk about what you find unique about our system, Adam. It's definitely a different type of construction. When you talk about different modular panels that we use, it's not typical framing unless we do the steel studs with the panel over it but it's still way different, I'm assuming, than most of the insulations you've seen before. So when we get back from break I kind of want to talk about that. Okay guys?

Adam: Yes, I'm good.

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Bill Anderson: We are back. I appreciate you hanging on through break. And as promised we were going to talk about TBF panels and why the electricity, how you actually install it. The way we do it folks is there's a channel that goes up, on the ceiling, after we do our fire blocking, there's a panel that goes on the bottom and the whole finished wall gets put in place.

Brad Wazlavek: It's really neat, the wall is so strong it acts like its own stud.

Bill Anderson: Exactly.

Brad Wazlavek: It supports itself and it's actually very cool. The sheer reading is up over 800 pounds I think the last time I checked. What I like to tell people is, if you can find a bracket that holds that kind of weight you can pretty much hang anything on the wall.

Bill Anderson: I mean TVs aren't even 800 pounds, even like the old, the Curtis Map TV you could hold one of those, the whole wooden box TVs, I don't even know if those were 800 pounds.

Brad Wazlavek: It's pretty impressive actually.

Bill Anderson: So Adam like I said, when we put these Woddler wall units in there it's not traditional framing. Traditional framing for the people who don't know you basically build a studded wall. You have your two plates, your top and your bottom plate and then you have your studs that run up and down. Normally, as an electrician somebody would come in and they would put all the walls up and you'd come in there with the drill and start drilling the studs and start running your wires.

Adam: Right.

Bill Anderson: So what makes ours so different? What are the challenges? What makes it easier? What makes it harder? What do you find with our system?

Adam: I have to admit the first time that I've seen one of these panels I was absolutely amazed at the construction of it, how heavy duty it is. It doesn't surprise me that it would hold 800 pounds.

Bill Anderson: Yes, it's pretty funny because you say heavy duty. Have you ever held one?

Adam: Yes, I actually had to move one once and it was fun. Brad Wazlavek: They're something like 95 pounds apiece.

Bill Anderson: 95 pounds a piece - when we're bringing those things downstairs the guys get –

Brad Wazlavek: It's one at a time.

Bill Anderson: Yes, it's definitely one at a time; the guys definitely get a workout. So anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Adam: No that's okay, like I saying the construction of everything, how well it's built and I definitely can see where the inorganic product and all that is an advantage to he typical dry wall that we're used to see.

Bill Anderson: We have to call for inspections whenever we do electricity with you - and I'm not trying to have you speak for an inspector - but normally you come in and you get a rough-in inspection. And what does a rough-in inspection consist of?

Adam: A rough-in inspection is where the underwriter will come in and actually take a look at all the wiring in the walls, etc. and to make sure that your boxes are spaced out per code and things of that nature.

Bill Anderson: Now with us when we put that full panel up there that's a finished wall so if you ever heard any issues with the inspector saying "Well I can't really see all the wires."

Adam: No, actually the inspector told me that he had never seen that before and that he was impressed with it. They pretty much treated it as a remodel when they looked at it.

Bill Anderson: We normally leave a couple of panels here and there open so when you go to get your rough-in inspection they can actually get a shot in the flashlight behind the panels. Is there any type of special conduit you have to use and I should actually know this question, but I don't. Is there any special application for us that you do that you don't do in typical wooden construction?

Adam: Still pretty much the same practice with the new code, tamper-proof receptacles are installed and –

Bill Anderson: What does that mean?

Adam: Tamper-proof receptacle you have to engage both slots in the receptacle with a plug for it to operate.

Bill Anderson: When you go to put your plug in it has two little peak-a-boo doors so the kid can't go stick in the fork.

Adam: Yes, exactly.

Bill Anderson: That's how I learned when I was a kid - I learned about electricity early on - I stuck a fork in a receptacle and I wanted to burn my little brother with my fork one day so I turned on the toaster and I stuck my fork in the toaster. I thought those were hot, not electricity, so I learned real quickly those were electric.

Brad Wazlavek: That actually kind of explains a lot. Obviously our stuff is a little more cutting edge and I think that's really cool that the little things really push it over the top. We're not running down your local home improvement store, our stuff is specially made for what we do. The little doors on there, the tamper-proof receptacles are just one of those little things that kind of set us apart and it's a really cool thing.

Bill Anderson: And one of the nicest things I've seen from homeowners or that we get a lot of raves about is the fact that obviously you're not an employee of ours, you guys own your own company, but we bundle your guys as services into our proposals and our packages and all that so that way the homeowner doesn't have to go out there and hire company A and then hire company B and then they'll have to sit there and coordinate subcontractors. Even if it's just us doing a simple dehumidifier and they need electricity. They can get it all from us, knowing that there's a really licensed electrician. You talked about it, I guess it was last week's show, about the licensing that you have to go through. Four years is a long time, I mean that's a pretty heavy commitment, that's a college degree, whether you go - maybe you could go at full time in two years and part time in four years, or whatever the case may be, there's a lot of schooling involved. I like that because our company truly preaches training, and Adam, we'll spend more in training this year than a lot of companies make. Making sure that all of our guys are trained; that's not just the new guys on the block, that's not the old guys, that's everybody. I plan on taking my production manager to Illinois, hopefully in the next week, or two and we're going to look at some different mud jacking techniques. And we don't do a lot of mud jacking - we talked about that in previous shows where we inject a grout underneath concrete, whether it's a sidewalk or a garage - we're going to actually raise that slab without having to bust it open, it's so much less intrusive. But those different techniques that people are constantly learning, maybe a different way they do it, maybe a different handle. We always try really hard to keep up on the top of our products no matter what we're doing. I mean you've been with us for - except Brad - about a year now and you're already been to what - five or six trainings already.

Adam: Actually you lose track after a while, but the thing I like about it is a lot of industries require continuing education and we understand they're required, but we do it because it's right, and that's what I really like about it, not even so much that there's a new product. If there is somebody who's had a lot of success doing something differently, our network is so vast that we can give them a call, we can set up a web conference or something, and we can learn that new way to do it, or that new technique. It works to our advantage as well - that's another thing that really kind of sets us above the rest.

Bill Anderson: But you do a designing “webinar” every week with Basement Systems and they really talk about - and that's the cool thing about it because most of the time we have sales people that are supposed to be on the road selling all day. Forget about training we invest that time with Brad and obviously a “webinar” doesn't cost anything. But that's obviously lost production because we can't have really appointments before it and the time of day there really isn't a whole lot time to do it afterwards. So when Brad sits down in his different “webinars” and we really get into the meat and the bones, let's face it basement finishing is a different animal.

Brad Wazlavek: Basement finishing is a lot more intense.

Bill Anderson: And it's a lot more complicated. We need to make sure that our homeowners are 100% educated. I can't stand it when I go into a home and we'll have to go against the dry wall guys. Like there's a new product. Brad, remember we were talking about it last week and maybe you don't even know I'm assuming you don't know about it, Adam, but somebody took the TBF panel, they looked at it, and they said "Man, this thing is great, this thing is wonderful. How can I be a dealer for it?" They said "You can't be a dealer because this area is filled" and we don't over saturate the area, which I do like. There's not that weird competition that you get at some other places. It's sort of the same, it's the same idea anyway of the harder type inorganic board that has insulation on the back of it. However they finished it off with dry wall mud, tape, and they paint them.

Adam: This defeats the purpose.

Bill Anderson: The whole idea of doing this is to stop mold and mildew, that's the only reason to do this thing. So what they're doing is they're putting dry wall mud which gets in the rock but there's glue in gypsum that makes it moldy, or it's organic so it can get moldy. And does anybody know what paint's made out of?

Brad Wazlavek: Latex.

Bill Anderson: It's latex, that's where latex comes from.

Brad Wazlavek: It's rubber, that's a plant.

Bill Anderson: When they say rubber tree that there's actually a real rubber tree, it's not like the money tree or things like that, it truly is a real living organism, it's a plant and they take that rubber and they refine it out of that tree and they make latex and different rubbers. Now, I know that there are some synthetic rubbers, but there are only one or two paints out there that aren't completely organic, but there are still some. Like you said, Brad, I mean there's no sense in doing anything, if the whole idea that you're trying to accomplish is to keep something from being moldy.

Brad Wazlavek: The number one reason that we get people calling to "refinish their basement" where it's already been done in existing dry wall and it's been there - who knows - 20/30 years, is because of the smell. And most of your smells are going to come from your rot, your mold, things like that, so if you're going to refinish it and you're going to put all this time and energy into it why not deal with something that's never going to happen again?

Bill Anderson: Well tell Adam your favorite picture.

Brad Wazlavek: Well my favorite picture is - and this is kind of funny - I know I asked but I have a presentation that I use and there are pictures of what happens to dry wall and the fiberglass and fabric panels. There's this one picture and for the dry wall it's gorgeous, it looks like a wall that just got put up and there's a guy squatting down with a piece of it cut out and it's just the back of it, it's nothing but black mold. And the reason why Bill likes this is because the guy's name is Bill Anderson, so it's kind of funny.

Bill Anderson: Actually I made a joke when we started with Basement Systems. They have a sales guy there named Bill Anderson, so I told Mike Delmolino who's in charge of the CleanSpace, or the wet crawl space division in the Basement Finishing Division that he liked me so much that he had to go out and get his own.

Brad Wazlavek: It's an amazing picture and it's one of those things that where it's usually the first one I show and I just sort of put it up on the screen and sit there quiet for a second, let that sink in, because a lot of people don't realize that yes, your wall can look gorgeous from the front and the smell - I can't say how many calls we get even for basement waterproofing and they call up and they say "Hey, the smell, where's it coming from, I don't understand, it's not visible?” You cut out a piece and their dry wall's going to show, it's just nothing but black mold on the back and I'm talking thick, just everywhere, and the reason behind that is - and this is another reason why our panels are neat - you constantly have water vapor coming in through your walls. Whether it is poured concrete or block foundation, it's very porous, it's basically a hard sponge. So what happens is that when there's nothing there to block it, it comes out into the room, creates humidity and evaporates. But, if you put a dry wall, stud it, plain foundation wall there or structure there, it's going to block all that and it's going to create a circular motion. There's no place for that water to evaporate anymore, it's going to suck up into that dry wall, or anything that's organic really and that's where you get the mold problem. Now to kind of get off that, I know we talked about electricity earlier and I kind of want to get back on that, but we had talked earlier about the distance between electrical outlets, what does code say the electrical outlet distance has to be.

Adam: By code you have to have a receptacle within 12 feet of each other, wall space, within 6 feet of a door opening and a wall that is two feet or more must have a receptacle to go on it.

Brad Wazlavek: Okay, now the two feet thing really interested me. You don't run into it a lot, but sometimes you have a wall that a lot of basements, you might see, there's a little bump out, it's a little strange, maybe there's a bay window, or something and people want to save that wall space to put shelving in. But that's a two-foot wall, you need a receptacle. You need a power outlet on that wall and I think that's really interesting. You hardly ever see that upstairs in the house, so it's something to definitely think about. If you want to keep that little bump out you're going to need some electrical outlets there if it's two feet, or bigger. The reason I really ask is he says every 12 feet is the same thing with the lighting, every 100 square feet of lighting needs a light, we use every 60 because we find it's better one obviously for easier math, but also because people will want more outlets generally. We like to do one for every 10 linear feet.

Bill Anderson: Well it also helps with the doorways and I know like so much between the door and so much on a normal wall those differ.

Brad Wazlavek: So it's good to have a couple of extra. I found that a lot of times, especially recently with doing a lot of basements, the man cave idea, there's going to be a TV, chances are there's going to be some sort of entertainment system. Whether it's blue ray, or some sort of a gaming platform you're going to need your electrical outlet, you're going to need your internet connections - something like that - all three of those bunched up together. Then people want the regular outlets throughout the room so you need to have a few extra. Like I said, constantly keep in mind based upon what you want to do with your basement. It's really interesting just to hear this code and that was one of the things that really drew me into the basement finishing aspect. When I started I was all crawl space and basement waterproofing and then the basement finishing thing came around and I was like "Let me try that," completely different animal like we were talking about earlier, it's really different. We really have to sit down and design a living space, it's not fixing an existing problem it’s designing something that you're going to want to enjoy for years and years and years. Speaking of which our wall panels themselves have a 50-year warranty, that's five zero, fully transferable and fully nationally backed by Basement Systems which I think is really cool because you're just not going to get that anywhere else.

Bill Anderson: You said you're 31 Brad, right?

Brad Wazlavek: I'm 31 now.

Bill Anderson: So by the time you're 81 that's when our warranty –

Brad Wazlavek: Knock on wood, by the time I'm 81 that's when our warranty will end. The really cool thing is obviously a lot of times people don't stay in their house that long, maybe it's a starter home or something and they just want a really cool space and they're going to sell it in 10 years. When you go to sell your home and say "Hey, by the way, I know you like the rest of the house, let's go take a look at the basement" there are 40 years left on those walls if you've lived there 10 years. You've enjoyed that space for 10 years and you can pass that warranty on. A lot of warranties that you get with different companies they're not transferable. Also the nationally backed aspect of it is nice because if something happens to your company they can give you a thousand year warranty, but it's only covered by them and if for some reason they go under, or maybe they get sold your warranty is gone. With us if something happens to our company, hopefully it won't, but if something does happen it's still covered nationally, actually technically internationally because we do have divisions in England, Ireland, and Canada as well. Our warranties are a big part of my presentation, a big part of our deal. The walls are 50 years, flooring is either five or ten depending upon what you get, and then the ceiling itself is 30 years. Now the ceiling is huge as well, 30-year warranty on ceiling - that goes against sagging, discoloration. Again it's very heavy duty warranty so that's something that's always been a big point for me to touch with people.

Bill Anderson: Adam you actually snake the wires because we don't have the traditional wire. I'm assuming we're running grooves on the back of the panels for the ones that are right up against the wall, there's no special conduit we have to use?

Adam: No the walls and the [inaudible 27:12] are ready for each other and it's approved and totally legal by code.

Bill Anderson: Perfect. The nice thing is for Kent, Sussex, and New Castle and I don't know about the ones in Maryland, I don't know if you've given any books out to the inspectors or not.

Adam: I'm not sure, it's been a while.

Bill Anderson: I know for New Castle County with Steve Wensel which - I'll tell you one thing, here's the deal - and Adam I know that you guys have to deal with some of these different things, but New Castle's tough in Delaware. I love that. Like with us, we're a foundation company and I love the fact that no matter what somebody's in their checking on and they want engineer's reports and they want regular permits and they want this and they want that and they want this. I definitely want to give a plug out to New Castle County and Maryland because Maryland's the same way, you have to have your MHICs which is Maryland Home Improvement Liaisons and all that. I just kind of want to give them kudos.

Brad Wazlavek: Last time I was out there, for instance, they scared me at the office, before I went up there for the first time, and they were like "Oh, I can’t be here all day. It's a pain, this and that." I had a great experience, I went up there, I was taken right away, they had like different stages, they have your intake and then they have the actual inspector that you sit down with but I really enjoyed it, it took me a couple of hours and I got what I needed and they're really friendly, definitely a good plug.

Bill Anderson: Troy's overhead telling me we've got to go. I want to thank you both very, very much for getting up this early, early cold Sunday morning and folks this is Bill Anderson with Under Your Home with DryZone and I've been joined by Brad Wazlavek who's going to be here for a few more weeks with me and then Adam and I'm not even going to try to pronounce your last name.

Adam: It's Klemanski.

Bill Anderson: Klemanski.

Adam: Good Irish name.

Bill Anderson: So Adam why don't you go ahead and give out your numbers before we leave the show this morning.

Adam: J&A Electric at (302) 943-9894.

Brad Wazlavek: And once again DryZone you can get a hold of us at DryZone.com. You can also email Bill at bill@dryzone.com.

Bill Anderson: And you can always get a hold of us locally at (302) 684-5034. Gentlemen I appreciate you being here and folks we will see you next week.

Male Speaker: You've been listening to Under Your Home with DryZone. DryZone in Milton, Delaware -your complete source for basement and crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing; 24-hour service - we never sleep at DryZone.

Electricity in Crawlspaces

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:30:10 -0400

Male Speaker: It's time for Under Your Home with DryZone. DryZone in Milton,Delaware -your complete source for basement and crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing; 24-hour service - we never sleep at DryZone.

Bill Anderson: Good morning folks, this is Bill Anderson with Under Your Home with DryZone and I have a special guest for the next few weeks. We have Brad Wazlavek. Brad, how are you this morning?

Brad Wazlavek: I'm doing pretty well, Bill.

Bill Anderson: Brad's been with us for, I guess about a year now and he takes care of a lot of our crawl spaces, he takes care of a lot of our wet basements, he's also doing our basement finishing projects. You and Burt have been doing that together for a little while now; that's definitely your main area of focus since we moved Burt over to the engineers.

Brad Wazlavek: Oh yes, it's true, I really enjoy it actually. It's something that gives me multiple things to focus on and really, kind of adds another tool to the tool bag as they say.

Bill Anderson: Well not only do we have Brad this morning but we also have Adam and Adam is from J&A Electric Company and they do all of our electric work -Adam how are you this morning?

Adam Klemanski: Good, how are you?

Bill Anderson: We really wanted to talk definitely with Adam this morning, kind of talk about some different codes because I've had a lot of homeowners, and Brad and I, we've talked about this for a little bit, and we go in there and we talk to homeowners about our crawl spaces, even our basements. There are a lot of electrical things that have to go in a home for these different components to work. So, Adam we have a couple of different things that you do for us, like I said in the crawl spaces and basements, and then you do all of our wiring and finish electric stuff for basement finishing projects. So I want to talk a little bit this morning with Adam about electricity for crawl spaces. What actually has to happen? What does the code say? Like with us our SaniDry CXs, they're 6.4 amps, our sump pumps are made by Zoeller and they're like 9.3 and 9.4 amps. What does that actually mean to a layman person? What's an amp? What does it all mean?

Adam Klemanski: Well actually with the National Electric Code it states that anything in a crawl space must be GFI protected especially like receptacles, equipment, and all that stuff. Basically in your installations we usually run a circuit for each piece of equipment due to the drawl of each one.

Bill Anderson: The drawl is what the actual plank uses.

Adam Klemanski: The amperes, correct.

Bill Anderson: So what does GFI mean?

Adam Klemanski: Ground fault - it's actually GFCI, ground fault circuit interrupter.

Bill Anderson: And what does that mean?

Adam Klemanski: It's an imbalance that's created where it will trip like a breaker would.

Bill Anderson: In the event of?

Adam Klemanski: A fault like moisture, anything, any kind of imbalance.

Bill Anderson: So like when your wife tries to throw the toaster in the bathtub.

Adam Klemanski: You've got it.

Bill Anderson: It's supposed to trip so you don't get shocked, right?

Adam Klemanski: Correct.

Bill Anderson: When you start talking about the different wiring and all that, I've gone into a lot of homes and I've seen - and Brad I'm sure you've seen the exact same thing- we go into a house and it's just this great big bird's nest of wires that people are daisy changing everything. If we're working down a crawl space and we plug one of our drills into a socket that's underneath a home the refrigerator might pop off on the third floor or something like that. How do you actually get the wires from point A to point B to where we know it's just a single circuit connection?

Adam Klemanski: We actually go straight from the panel, the circuit breaker, to the receptacle itself which in that term would be a dedicated circuit. We don't plug into anything; it's under the crawl space because standard practice for all our homes was to just drop a receptacle or a light, something of that nature, from the living room or a bedroom or anything that's pretty close by.

Bill Anderson: So you drill through the wood, you go up through the ceiling. I know a lot of times we find them in garages so I mean what's the process of what you guys do to get from point A to point B?

Adam Klemanski: There are a few different ways. When the panel is in the garage, we run a pipe from the panel to the crawl space and drill through and then run our wire. If the panel is in the laundry room or a bedroom say like in an older home we're able to fish down the wall without any damage into the crawl space and go that route.

Bill Anderson: And by fish what do you mean?

Adam Klemanski: Inside the wall.

Bill Anderson: So you'll just drill a hole at the top and the bottom and then?

Adam Klemanski: Yes, come through the bottom plate, drill a hole, fish it up into the panel, like it was pretty much there with the house.

Bill Anderson: I'm assuming we're still using Romex nowadays, right?

Adam Klemanski: Right.

Bill Anderson: The biggest thing with our show is we talk about education. So what I want to do for all the layman people because you all know what Romex is and GFIs. I know you talked with my business partner this morning about trying to run the different panels outside by our shop; even I will start to get clueless on some of the things you guys were talking about. You'll say "Well this three phase is running down the end or the road," so with our show we try to really get the homeowners to understand exactly what's happening on very layman's terms. We use this cable called Romex and I know that's a very standard wire nowadays, right?

Adam Klemanski: Right.

Bill Anderson: What is Romex?

Adam Klemanski: Romex is basically a NM-B cable, non-metallic, sheath cable. It's standard practice in residential applications for today's code and standards.

Bill Anderson: Now what happens if you go in there and you see - because I was looking at some pictures from a house I guess it was last, one of our guys was looking at it. It had the old porcelain knobs and knobbing too, so, tell me how things have progressed from electricity from even 20 or 30 years ago because a lot of our homeowners they're going to see this stuff and if they see the old knob and tube and they're like "Okay, that doesn't look like the Romex thing you were just talking about." What really are the options out there? I know it's just pretty much Romex nowadays but what can people see in their homes?

Adam Klemanski: Well actually by code, knob and tube is actually still legal, it's actually grandfathered in by grandfather - I means if it's part of the home that it can stay but in new applications it's not suggested to use that method because it's outdated and not as reliable as Romex is with the ground. Being the key Romex has the ground and if it were knob and tube it doesn't - that's pretty much a non-insulated wire running across joists and etc. with the use –

Bill Anderson: Good way to get a fire then. So we go from the box and you guys are putting in a brand new breaker and a box.

Adam Klemanski: Correct.

Bill Anderson: We normally talk with like a 15-amp breaker. It's funny I have a lot of homeowners that will put in a dehumidifier and will also put in a sump pump. So, most homeowners say "Okay your dehumidifier is 6.4 amps, your sump pumps like 9.3." So, obviously we're going to be over the 15-amp limit for a breaker. They'll say "Just go ahead and put a 20-amp breaker in there." Why do you not want to do that?

Adam Klemanski: The first thing is that a breaker can only handle 80% of it's rated capacity so a 15-amp breaker can only handle 12 amps and a 20-amp breaker can only handle 16 amps. If you do the math with that you definitely want to stay within the range to where you don't have the possibility of tripping the breaker. If you were to put both of these units on one breaker then obviously it would trip at some point.

Bill Anderson: And the biggest thing that I see is that most people don’t realize that breakers are designed to trip and that's a good thing. You don't want to oversize the breaker just so you can stick more stuff on it. It's funny because I have one homeowner that just would not listen to us. They were like "Billy listen" they had two sump pumps and they had a dehumidifier. They wanted to put like a 30-amp breaker in there and I'm like "We're not doing it" and they're like "Why? It will fit. It technically, will work" and I'm like "You don't oversize the breaker to meet your needs, you put the appropriate breaker in there for the right equipment and that's a huge thing that we see as water-proofers who install the different electrical equipment. I think people just hear "Okay, I need a 30-amp breaker. We'll just install that because it's probably going to be cheaper since you're only running one wire," and then you put like a double duplex box in there. What kind of stuff do you see that you're like "Oh my God, what were they thinking?" I know that - Brad I know you've seen stuff - I've had houses where I've gone in and there was water in the crawl space and this is back when we would go in there when there was a lot of water in there and you go swimming through the crawl space. I came up on this hill, this mound of dirt that was in the crawl space. Sitting right on top of that hill was a wire that came out of the crawl space ceiling onto the ground - it was wound up with an outlet stuck in it that was live. Definitely, not good, so when we look underneath the home one of the first things our guys try to do is staple all the wires up that they can. I don't know about you, Adam, but I can't stand a lot of people in the other trades. There's a house that we did in Georgetown, actually Brad you sold it, we had to have the sewer pipe moved because we had to put in new supplemental girders underneath the crawl space because the floors were sagging and they were getting a lot of moisture in there. We basically had to put in supplemental supports. Well, unfortunately, one of the sewer lines that was going into addition run exactly the same place that we had a support going in. So we called up a plumber to move it and the bad thing was when the homeowner called up the plumber they chose their own guy. Whoever did the cable wires ran it around the sewer pipe, I guess to keep it above the floor, somebody didn't buy nails, and they literally just strapped it all the way around it. So that was a nightmare for the plumber to get done. However, once we did what we had to do they come out, they cut their pipe, we came in there, supported the floor, we lifted the structure. We got it nice and level again - the floor. The plumber came back in and literally right in front of the crawl space door ran the sewer pipe so the crawl space doors are normally only - the entrance - only 32 inches wide by maybe 16 or 24 inches tall. In this case it was actually 24 inches tall so right in the middle of that they ran a four-inch sewer pipe. So you couldn't get any big piece of equipment in there anymore and it was a nightmare because you had to go into like a little basement before you ever got into the crawl space. You had to get up on a ladder, right as you try to go in the door where the HVAC guy already ran the geothermal lines; which was hard enough, now there's a sewer pipe right in your way, it was a complete nightmare. What they did was they ruined that homeowner's entrance. Now they're going to have to pay to have a brand new entrance cut into that crawl space so you can access it from another way because there's just way to do it now. I know you see stuff like that all the time.

Adam Klemanski: What I tend to see is in the workmanship with wiring being on the ground like you said and I know that we take pride in stapling the wires up correctly and making sure that everything is secure. I've also seen that with your guys, they make sure that everything is on point. I think a lot of times it's out of sight out of mind in a crawl space and possibly the homeowner doesn't go under there so maybe a lot of guys, I can't speak for everybody, but they may think "Okay, what's the quickest way to get it done" and it's no big deal because you can't see it.

Bill Anderson: You know it's funny because - and Brad we were talking about this in our last training class we had at the shop - the first house we ever sold DryZone, the first house DryZone ever sold Gary and I went out to do the inspection and to make the presentation to the homeowner. When we got underneath there and the house – maybe it was 1- or 15 years old, I don't know - but what we found was a great big pile of Reese peanut butter cups, the packages, and a 12-pack of beer right in the same pile like somebody was just sitting there, I guess doing the framing and started eating peanut butter cups and drinking beer. What are the weird stuff you guys have seen? You guys have been in a crawl space.

Adam Klemanski: I've actually seen - I have a little collection going on my laptop from strange things I've seen, someone’s watch, I guess maybe broken and they just dropped it in the crawl space, it was laying down there all rusted up. Actually the other day, I guess it's probably a week and a half, or so, ago I saw an old newspaper and nobody can tell that the newspaper is a little older by the print and I got up on top of it and it was shredded up and I found a date stamp and it was from 1947, it was the Wall Street Journal, so I thought that was pretty cool. The house is probably 150 years old and obviously my granddad was down there at some point, or who knows what, but I thought that was pretty cool.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, definitely some strange things. I see a lot of like ‘70s and ‘80s style Pepsi cans and things like that. Where contractors have just thrown their trash when they're doing it and luckily when we go in there and do the clean space system. We clean all that out and it makes it look a lot nicer and then you actually see homeowners - I've had several of them joke about "Hey, however it goes out upstairs I'm crawling underneath the house because it's going to be nice and cozy and clean" and that always makes me smile.

Bill Anderson: I know that you couldn't make it that day, Brad, and I don't know if we ever told you, but the extreme homemaker's house that was down in Mardela, we did the crawl space in it. When we got down in there and it amazed me how fast, we talked about it a lot for like four or five weeks on the show, but when we got down there to actually do the work, my daughter goes to the same school that this young boy, he got his arm cut off, he went to school so my daughter was like "Daddy, I think you really would look kind of cool if you did this house." Actually, Brad you got a hold of the company for us and volunteered our services and everything, when we got there that day it was a concrete floor, it was like pre-cast walls, it was easy to build the home. I was trying to figure out how they built a house that quick because you need dry time in mortar and everything else so they basically had these pre-fab walls that they just pour the concrete in. There was a lot of junk left in this crawl space and the sad part is even if it was just concrete it wouldn't have been bad if somebody went down there and washed it up, it was amazing. And the sad part is I know everybody was trying to get this house done. So, it was quick you leave some material down there. We don't like to leave material on jobs because first of all it's rude, and number two you’d think you'd be able to use it on the next couple of jobs. If we ever wonder why businesses don't succeed it's because they don't keep track of their stuff. When we went underneath there I found a good $200 to $300 worth of fittings, just plumbing fittings underneath there. I found three and a half full boxes of Romex, we found a whole half box of breakers that haven't even been used yet, still wrapped up and everything. It was amazing how much stuff was left down in there. The sad part is we still see that in a brand new house, not some special Extreme Home Makeovers or Habitat for Humanity or anything like that, I'm talking about somebody paid to have this work done, they built their dream home, the house we're going to live in forever and it's a million dollar mansion at the beach - a million dollars doesn't buy you a mansion at the beach anymore but –

Brad Wazlavek: You might want to up that two or three times.

Adam Klemanski: Guilt property, right?

Bill Anderson: It's amazing at how long or how much stuff people live underneath that thing, it just absolutely kills me. So when you go down there and you know nobody takes care of their stuff. We've got to take a break real quick, if you guys will hang out through the break, the station's got to make some money, and we’ll be right back.

Male Speaker: Do you want to cut energy costs and save up to 20% of your heating bill each month? Let DryZone show you how. DryZone will install a clean space encapsulation system in your crawl space and save you money. When your crawlspace is encapsulated by DryZone your heating system won't work so hard, your tile and hardwood floors won't be cold, and your crawl space becomes great for storage. DryZone offers interest-free financing for 18 months. Don't be left out in the cold.

Male Speaker: Do you work with or are you a member of an organization that provides employment information or job referrals? Any organization that regularly distributes employment information to job seekers or refers candidates to employers is eligible to receive information about our job vacancies. To be contacted when we have jobs available contact Beverly Jones by mail, PO Box 237 Cambridge Maryland 21613, fax at(410) 228-0130 or by email atbjones211@comcast.net. You will then receive periodic announcements of jobs at our stations. MTS Broadcasting LC is an equal opportunity employer.

Male Speaker: Hey you, yes you, how much do you get paid per hour? You know that's just about what you'll save by going to Easton Hardware 303 North Washington Street in Easton instead of one of those cavernous discount stores. What would you rather spend your time doing? Looking for your supplies or actually working on your project? At Easton Hardware you'll park a few steps away from the door not way, way down there. You'll go inside, ask for what you need, and quickly be shown all the items to complete your successful do-it-yourself project, not wondering hopelessly lost in aisles of stuff, trying to guess if you picked out the part that will fit your pieces. When you subtract the frustration of trying to look for the supplies you need, subtract the frustration of trying to look for the supplies you need, subtract the extra time, guess what? It all adds up to savings of both your patience and your pocket. Spend time on your project, not on the supplies at the real savings place - Easton Hardware. Easton Hardware 303 North Washington Street in Easton.

Bill Anderson: We are back and we're still being joined with Brad Wazlavek, he's one of our system design specialists at DryZone and we're also here with J&A Electric and before the break our producer was holding up a sign showing the 800 number and we forgot to mention our numbers here. You can always get a hold of DryZone at 955- D-R-Y-Z-O-N-E which is the 800 number or you can get a hold of us locally at (302) 684-5034. You can find us on the web at DryZone.com where all of our shows are archived, where we have lots of videos, we have lots of testimonials, reviews, all that good stuff, and if you have any questions you can always get a hold of me at my email which is simple bill@dryzone.com and Adam since you're our special guest this morning why don't you go ahead and give out your numbers.

Adam Klemanski: You can get a hold of us at (302) 943-9894 or if you prefer email that would be jaelectricde.aol.com.

Bill Anderson: So Adam how long have you guys been in business?

Adam Klemanski: A little over three years.

Bill Anderson: And you're licensed where?

Adam Klemanski: Delaware and Maryland.

Bill Anderson: Obviously you just can't go out and just become an electrician. What's the process of somebody actually becoming an electrician?

Adam Klemanski: The typical process is to do an apprenticeship for four years and to go to school and then you can obtain your license after that point but pretty much it's the schooling on top of the hours in the trade which go hand in hand.

Bill Anderson: Where did you go to school at?

Adam Klemanski: I went to Delcastle for the State Apprenticeship Program upstate in Newark.

Bill Anderson: And you did that for how long?

Adam Klemanski: Four years.

Bill Anderson: Four years - wow. I'm assuming that's just like a regular college at that point then?

Adam Klemanski: Actually it's like adult education night school. It's an equivalent of a college curriculum.

Bill Anderson: Okay and you said you had to apprentice so did you just have to work for somebody for four years or did you actually have like a mentor?

Adam Klemanski: Yes to be state registered you have to work underneath a licensed electrician so I went the contractor route, worked residential, commercial, industrial and then after a while decided it was time to open up my own business.

Bill Anderson: You have a partner, right?

Adam Klemanski: Correct.

Bill Anderson: And who's your partner?

Adam Klemanski: Jimmy Brittingham.

Bill Anderson: Okay why Jimmy? Why electricity? What's the story with J&A? Give me the background. Let's hear why because let's face it - we had Active Pest Control in here a few weeks ago. When we started promoting them it takes a whole to build relationships and trust people and they had a lot of things they had to prove to us and we had a lot of things we had to prove to them. I can give you a long list of what you guys proved why you get our business but for our listeners who get a chance to really get to know Adam at J&A tell me about your business.

Adam Klemanski: Well Jimmy and I have known each other probably for about five years now and we actually worked together. We got laid off from the same company and we had decided to start our own business because the economy was a little tough with trying to find jobs as an electrician for another contractor. We always had a lot of contacts from work we had done on the side and everything. We just decided to make a go of it and it's been great so far.

Bill Anderson: And without trying I guess to get into too much of your business DryZone will do anywhere between 400 to 600 homes this year. You guys pride yourselves on being small, you guys pride yourselves on taking care of -I don't want to say small like it's a bad thing because I don't think it is - but I know you cover our territory now which is from LINA Wilmington down to the Virginia line and then bay to bay but what separates J&A - by the way I think that's one other thing that does separate you guys that I know that I can get a hold of Adam, not Adam's secretary, not Adam's wife will answer the phone, I can just get a hold of Adam. Tell me why choose J&A.

Adam Klemanski: We pride ourselves on being on time, being reasonable, and we take pride in what we do - every project, big or small, we try to do it the right way and on time. We try to build relationships for the future not for the present.

Bill Anderson: You guys definitely don't skimp on materials which you don't go out there and buy the cheap breakers, you don't go out there - because I'm assuming even with Romex there are cheaper versions of it or is it just pretty much is Romex?

Adam Klemanski: It's pretty much standard. Every application is different, but we try to approach as if it was our home basically.

Bill Anderson: One of the reasons why we chose you guys is because you've worked in our home, you've taken care of us and you were one of the big, big people when it came to our Habitat for Humanity function. When we talk about the people that we build our relationships, I know that I can count on you guys. If I get a homeowner that something bad has happened and they need electricity right then I know you're willing to stop what you're doing, get somebody over there, and get it knocked out for us. As an owner I appreciate it just so you guys know. I want to talk to you a little bit about and I want to say that mostly for next week if I can because you said you were going to join us next week, correct?

Adam Klemanski: Correct.

Bill Anderson: Okay, I know getting up at 6:30 in the morning is hard, we've got a lot of coffee and Red Bulls here right now, so what attracted us to you? I have some more work now.

Adam Klemanski: Basically the first time I've ever seen a crawl space that was encapsulated I was absolutely just floored with that—the craftsmanship, how well it was done. And just the idea of what exactly this procedure is doing for homes, I like that, so it peaked my interest.

Bill Anderson: Let me talk to you a little bit about waterproofing because obviously that's near and dear to my heart, when we talk about condensation in a crawl space I know that the Romex is insulated so you don't necessarily have to worry about the rust inside the wire but the boxes; they'll get condensation even on the inside of it, right? I know a lot of that stuff is copper so you're not going to have to worry that much about trust but how much rust do you actually see in crawl spaces?

Adam Klemanski: Actually a basement that's not conditioned correctly, yes, we see it a lot where the terminals on the receptacle and even the sockets and the fixtures themselves, light fixtures.

Bill Anderson: And what happens with stuff like that?

Adam Klemanski: Corrosion and every time basically the wire's going to break free and it's not going to work - there are all kinds of possibilities with fire hazards, anything of that nature.

Bill Anderson: And I don't want to make it sound like this but I mean truly having an unconditioned crawl space could lead to a fire is what you're saying?

Adam Klemanski: Ultimately.

Bill Anderson: I mean I know it's got to be like the perfect storm, but I believe in Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law basically states that if it could happen it's going to happen at the worst possible time at the worst possible moment. So, I believe in the worst case scenarios on everything. You plan for the worst and hope for the best. Like the Delaware State Fair, they plan that thing so hard every year and they work so hard on it and I'll tell you last year it didn't rain that much but the heat was just about as bad as the rain.

Adam Klemanski: The heat was pretty awful.

Bill Anderson: You should know, Brad, you worked it with us.

Brad Wazlavek: I was there quite a bit, people were coming in, and we had the fan going all over, dehumidifiers coming in and out of the hut just to stand in front of the fan for a while.

Bill Anderson: The funny part was we were actually talking about getting - because we do a lot of different fairs and stuff like that and if you ever want to see where we're going to be on our website there's a little page on our left hand side that says Home Shows and we do that for more than just home shows, it's county fairs, it's home shows, it's our Lunch-and-Learns that our people do, our real estate presentations that we do, all that good stuff that's sitting on there. And if you ever do want to come see us at one of our home shows, or different events go right on our website, it tells you the dates, the times, the websites, wherever you want to find us. I want to get back into some stories guys and I know I'm kind of bouncing around here this morning and I apologize but –

Brad Wazlavek: That's pretty much power for the courses I write.

Bill Anderson: We didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night so I apologize in advance. I really want to hear about these weird stories because we always come on here every week and we preach and we talk and we do this and we do that. What are the weird things you guys are finding?

Brad Wazlavek: Well luckily a lot of people think that there might be a dead animal down there or something like that, I really haven't seen that many dead animals in my experience so that's good. It sets you at rest hopefully. I've only seen one snake which is good; a lot of people think there might be a lot of snakes down there. Truthfully the most I've ever seen as far as creepy crawlers goes is little candleback crickets, you see a lot of them.

Bill Anderson: You know it's funny because I talked with Darren about that like a couple of weeks ago and it's amazing the kind of stuff - if you haven't listened to the show yet Brad, or haven't even go on our website, listen to it, actually it should be uploaded here shortly, it's amazing the kind of bugs and stuff that you'll see and stuff he was talking about.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, that's pretty much my daily routine is going around through that stuff and as an inspector and a systems designer I get in there before the CleanSpace. So, we're quite used to getting cobwebs in the hair and everything like that to the point where, when I started here I actually had longer hair and I've decided I'm just going to keep it pretty short because of that. But as far as weird stories go I would say that the weirdest thing I've ever seen would definitely be that newspaper I talked about earlier but every once in a while you see something a little strange. You see a lot of people that they put deodorizers or something to soak up the smell and they don't realize that's it's basically putting a Band aid on a crack in a dam, it's not going to work.

Bill Anderson: There's a competitor that we have and I'm going to say shall remain nameless because I'm definitely not giving –

Brad Wazlavek: Probably a good idea, yes.

Bill Anderson: We're definitely not giving these folks plugs. They took like a Febreze thing, put their company sticker on it, put it down in the crawl space, and charged the homeowner like $50 a pop to put a deodorizer down there, like the same thing that you put in like bathrooms and everything else, the homeowners complained about smells, we went out there, we went underneath there, and I literally was like "Oh my word, are you kidding me?" It was the funniest thing I've ever seen and they had them everywhere. They had like 10 of them in this house. Well the thing is like literally you go to Harris Teeter or FoodLine and you pick up this little refill and you stick it in there. Problem was they sold it and that was it, they never even came back and said "Okay, we need to refill these things" none of that. You could tell the thing had been down there for like a long time - that's how they got the smells out of their house. So, I was sitting there to talk with them and they're like "All right, look, these things are like $50 a piece, it worked for about a month," which they should, you put enough perfume on anything and it will smell good for a few minutes, at least it's going to cover-up the smell, and she was like "But after that they stopped returning phone calls" and these were the same folks that they started out at like $150 a piece, these air fresheners were $150 when they first walked in and as soon as they said no they said "We’ll let me call my boss because my boss - I just have to call my boss and let them know that I'm leaving, I'm safe and everything," and he gets on the phone and he's like "What? Oh really? Are you kidding me? Wait a minute, hang on. Folks listen we actually had an overstock of these things, so what my boss is willing to do," and get this I can't believe it "we're going to drop it $50 so now they're only $100 for you" and the homeowner's like "Well listen that sounds great, I still need to think about it, we've got a couple more estimates coming in" and they were like "Okay, well I just wanted to let you know because we were running this special" and "Okay, so that's great." So the homeowner says "Thank you. You have a nice day" and then they called back up like an hour later and said "Well listen the house that we were working on we found that it isn't that far away from you. They're like maybe an hour away from you, but the house that we were just working on today, the lady was actually allergic to it. She had this really weird peanut reaction to it. So if you're not allergic to peanuts, we can get them in here and since we're only that far, we're only an hour away from you, we'll just drop them down to $50." And they were like "Well $50, it's going to work, right?" And they're like "Oh yes, it's absolutely going to work." So they went in there that afternoon and put like 10 of those things in there and like I said for a month it smelled okay I guess and then it just got bad again. They called us out there and they're like "Listen, I don't need your hard sells and I don't need this and that because we've already had that." I'm like "How about I just do an inspection for you and I'll show you what I find down there and we'll just go from there?" and the homeowner's like "Whatever, that's fine." So I go underneath there and I find this thing and I just start chuckling. And we brought it back to the office and Brad and all the other designers, I mean they were just rolling in their seats because it was the funniest thing they've ever seen. I'm just like "I can't believe the people using Febreze." It wasn't Febreze, it was some no-name knock-off Takahuchi brand or something. The moral of the story was they got sold a bill of goods and nothing good came from it. They rattled that money and let's face it $50 times 10 that's still $500, that's a lot of money, that's a decent TV at Wal-Mart nowadays.

Brad Wazlavek: For something that doesn't really do the job in the end.

Bill Anderson: Just be careful because if it sounds too good to be true it probably is, and that goes with electricians and that goes with anything. I've heard people promise the world and you have to verify, you just have to verify, you've got to verify, you've got to verify. The only thing that I know we have to verify right now is, I think we're running out of time. We need to get these phone numbers out so, Adam, I'll let you go ahead and start. Why don't you go and let everybody know all your good information.

Adam Klemanski: J&A Electric it's (302) 943-9894 and on the web atjaelectricdelaware.com.

Bill Anderson: Brad why don't you go ahead and give our –

Brad Wazlavek: Sure, we can be reached at DryZone.com. Also you can get a hold of Bill, my last name obviously is very hard to spell so I'm not going to bother, but Bill's website is dryzone.com and then his email is bill@dryzone.com very simple.

Bill Anderson: Gentlemen I appreciate you getting up early with me. Brad I know you said you're going to be here for the next few weeks with me.

Brad Wazlavek: I'll be here, you tell me where to be I'll be here.

Bill Anderson: I'll buy the coffee and Adam you're a big guy so next week if you join us. I'll bring the doughnuts, okay?

Adam Klemanski: All right.

Bill Anderson: Well folks I appreciate you listening. This has been Under Your Home with DryZone, please give us a call.

Basement Finishing Information

Thu, 10 May 2012 10:56:34 -0400

Bill Anderson: Good morning, this is Bill Anderson and this is Under Your Home with DryZone. I appreciate you folks getting up, having coffee with us. We're joined with Brad Wazlavek, one of our design specialists and Adam - he had so much fun last week that he wanted to hang out again. So, Adam I appreciate you getting up this morning.

Adam: Glad to be here.

Bill Anderson: And Brad you're employed by me so, you just had to do.

Brad Wazlavek: Where you tell me where to be I'll be there.

Bill Anderson: Listen, we were talking last week after show and I'm going to kind of let you guys talk a little bit. You kind of had your own little agenda for today. Before we start let's go ahead and get those pesky numbers out of the way. Adam you're still a guest here so why don't you go ahead and start.

Adam: J&A Electric at (302) 943-9894.

Brad Wazlavek: And of course you can get hold of DryZone online at DryZone.com - really neat website, constantly changing, so I definitely recommend checking that out.

Bill Anderson: Yes please because I work really hard at making sure that website -- I don't think people actually grasp when we start talking about our website, Brad, but we work so hard on our website, there's so much - have you ever been on our website, Adam?

Adam: Yes.

Bill Anderson: Okay. Have you been on it recently?

Adam: Not recently, in the past few weeks.

Bill Anderson: When he says recently it's almost every single day.

Adam: Like every hour.

Bill Anderson: I like to be on every five minutes there's so much information on there. Technically we have three different websites. We have our DryZone.com and we have our Delmarva Foundation Repair which is more of like our commercial foundation website and then we have our Total Basement Finishing-MD-DE.com.

Adam: Total basement finishing will get you there.

Bill Anderson: Yes, and then you just click on the Delaware part. On our main page if you ever want to check out those two just go to DryZone.com, scroll all the way to the bottom, and it actually has the two icons - the Foundation Support icon and the TBF, Total Basement Finishing icon. But just the DryZone.com is an amazing website, Adam. It's so interactive, there's so much stuff going on. You should be able to really find out every single thing you want. Recently we have been trying to win the Better Business Bureau Torch Award in Delaware so we had submitted a packet to them explaining to the Better Business Bureau why we deserve this award. We talk a little bit about our website. When you look at it there's so much information that you have to be careful, sometimes too much information is a bad thing. It's not splashy, it's just very user-friendly and I think that's very important. My mom and Dad are constantly on the website now. Not my website but just the internet in general and my Dad will say, "Billy should I touch this? Should I hit this button? What should I do?" Mom and Dad never had a computer so this is their first real introduction to it. Now they're on Facebook, which is scary. DryZone does have a - just for you folks who actually do go on Facebook - DryZone does have a Facebook page so find us and like us.

Brad Wazlavek: The majority of the world is on Facebook now.

Bill Anderson: I live through my wife's Facebook when she posts all of our stuff on it.

Brad Wazlavek: You know the cool thing about that is the DryZone Facebook page let's you know if we have an upcoming event. A couple of months back we did a Habitat for Humanity where we went to the Green Turtle in Louis. It was actually October 25th we went to the Green Turtle. Adam was just a huge help with that. We went there and donated 10% of the daily profits, we had a booth set up and we were educating people and had a lot of different donations come in from different areas. Like I said, Adam was a huge help with that, getting a doctor's office and some other stuff came in so that was big and obviously the Facebook page is the place to find out about those things. If you go in there and you like us you'll get updates and also we'll tend to throw things out there if there's a storm coming, a lot of people say "You know my basement only leaked the one time."

Adam: Water's not going anywhere; it's going to find a way in. If it found a way in one time it will find a way in again so keep an eye on that. When it’s into the rainy season definitely checking out our page, see if there's a storm coming.

Bill Anderson: Let's be honest about it, we didn't have much of a winter this year. It's going to be spring here shortly. It's raining more and more every week.

Brad Wazlavek: And with the snow we had a quarter inch, it was up north a little.

Bill Anderson: We had to, actually, go up north a couple of weekends ago. Heather, my wife, and I, we've been on the Atkin's diet so we haven't really been eating anything good, it's just all been proteins. I don't know if you guys have ever done this, but I'm telling you now fondue is the coolest thing in the world and that sounds very 1970, but I'm telling you it is so much fun. You sit at this little private table and have a little burner in front of it and they put this pot in front of you and you get to pick out these different types of cheeses. They actually melt the cheese right in front of you and they bring out apples and bread, and when you're on a no carb diet that's pretty much what bread is trust me, that bread tasted really good that night.

Brad Wazlavek: So you did that?

Bill Anderson: Oh yes, we definitely went high on the hog. And we don't normally do the dinner part; we've actually been doing the dessert part. We got this chocolate and peanut butter and then they put raspberry, cherry and blackberries. You start dipping like cheesecake and marshmallows. Even at 6:30 in the morning cheesecake sounds good. I don't remember where we were all going with that, but where were we?

Brad Wazlavek: It was snow. We got off topic on the snow. Like you said, we didn't really have a winter time so it's definitely going to hit the rainy season soon, keep an eye out for it. There are a million ways to get a hold of us. I mean DryZone is a pretty recognizable name; it's short and easy to remember. If you type in DryZone in a Google search you're going to come up with our page.

Bill Anderson: Yes, just make sure because there's apparently this cream that you can buy.

Brad Wazlavek: Really?

Bill Anderson: Yes, there's actually a Dry Zone Cream, not a waterproofing cream. It's really bizarre.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, it's funny.

Bill Anderson: Remember to put the .com after it. Like we were talking about our website, if you actually want to see your inspector you'll have pictures and a little bio, there's pictures of a lot of our team members and I'm working really hard to get everyone on it. Not only their picture. It's funny - I was looking at a lot of different websites, not even just within our own industry, I started looking at every website I could. Most companies when they have a meet-your-team page, which is what we have, they only put their sales guys on there, or the top people; they never actually put the guy who sweeps the shop, the guy who gets the dirtiest, who really works - let's face it - probably the hardest. They're never putting that up there. So we believe that we want to take care of all of our employees and all of our employees truly are family. There's nothing we wouldn't do for them and we know there's nothing they wouldn't do for us. We actually are trying to get all the bios of everybody in the company; that way when Brad goes out and hopefully they're already going to look at the website and they're going to see Brad and they're going to say "Oh Brad how's Jeremy, your son?" because Jeremy's on there.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, actually speaking of him his birthday is actually tomorrow, he turns eight, so I'm pretty happy about that.

Bill Anderson: When you look at it, Brad's going to be able to say "Okay, listen, since you know me you were obviously on that page." This is your foreman, this is his history, and then you may have - let's just for example say that it was Jeff and Jeff has a Henry and Israel on his crew. You're going to be able to know who Jeff, Henry, and Israel are and it's going to say that Jeff's the foreman and Israel he's the co-foreman and Henry he's the helper on the crew. That way it makes lot more personal.

Brad Wazlavek: I think it also makes the homeowners feel a lot more comfortable too.

Bill Anderson: Yes, because they know who they're dealing business with - everybody.

Brad Wazlavek: And how many times do you hire a contractor that even - I would say that a lot of people have some sort of landscaping done, even the guy that just mows your lawn.

Bill Anderson: I plan on just putting rocks in my yard.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, that's the easiest way to go, exactly. Let's just say for instance you have that, how many times do you really meet the guys who are actually doing it? This is a way that it makes it a lot more personable and makes you a lot more comfortable with our company and these guys obviously - like you said it's a family-run business, it's really tight knit. That was one of the things that really impressed me when I first started working here. It's been almost a year now and everybody looks out for each other, everybody takes care of each other. We get calls in the morning when the foreman’s go to our jobs and let us know "Hey, you know what? Your jobs starting. Anything I should know?" things like that - it's kind of nice, it's a really well run company and it really impressed me a lot from when I first started.

Bill Anderson: One of the neatest things that we do is a few weeks ago we held a job fair and I like to bring the people, whenever we're hiring for production, I like to bring the foremen in with their production manager and they get to interview a little bit. They get to talk to people, but when that actually comes down to hiring they actually get the vote on whom. They have to feel if that person's actually going to work well on their crews. I've had jobs before where companies have just hired arbitrary people - the manager's hired somebody and the workers are stuck with them -- whether they were good, bad, or what - so the lower people on our crews have a say on who's going to work on their crew. The biggest philosophy we have from Basement Systems and we've held it true to this day and it goes” "As long as I'm alive and as long as I am in DryZone it's going to stay that way." Most companies you go into there’s always inter office gossip; "Oh that guy over there, he's a jerk; that guy over there don't talk to him, don't eat lunch with him, he's just an ignorant so and so." With Basement Systems you don't hear that, there was no behind the doors punching somebody in the gut kind of thing. Everybody truly liked each other. These folks, when they started their company they all knew each other, they were all friends, and it wasn't like the new person who came in they had to try to work their way into this click. It was "Listen if we're going to hire you we're going to welcome you with open arms, you don’t have to earn your spot here, you've got to earn your right to get on my crew." Well they're the ones who voted them in basically so they can't turn around and say "You can't do this because you have to earn your right to do this." You voted him in so obviously you gave him that right. I think that when you really empower your employees to really help pick who they're going to work with they all start being a little bit more critical of who they want to hire. Definitely we have a performance-based type of a program with our guys. A lot of their money comes from, or a lot of their paycheck comes from the work being done on time and correct so they don't want to lose a bonus because somebody's in there not doing a good job. And when you have that type of philosophy your company people don't sit there and ride the clock anymore. I have a friend of mine that has a business and it's a small construction company and there are three guys working for him. He was out bidding a job one day and he came back and two of the guys were sleeping. They were sitting in one of the bedrooms because I guess they were still framing it up and they were just there taking a nap. While the cat's away the mice will play. And I truly believe that everybody in our company, when we go away we're fortunate enough in life, (and I thank God every morning) that I'm able to do the things with my family. Last year we went out on a cruise and it was our first real vacation because I wasn't using my cell phone on that boat because of the cost. But I knew that the company was taken care of because I have good people in place. Adam, like I said that's one of the reasons why we chose you guys to do electricity because you follow our same philosophies. You're going to see that on our website, you're going to see the people that you deal with, and very shortly we're trying to get links to our different vendors and all that other stuff so that way when we say "Hey listen, we're going to refer Adam" they're going to know who it is. It will be just like a meet-the-team page but it's going to be, for example: we use Jim and Donny from Kodiak Construction. They actually do a lot of our different panels and stuff like that for our Total Basement Finishing projects. Or if somebody needs just some different stuff done they're great for stuff like that. I want to be able to have those people on there, Adam, I want to have you and your guys on there, and we use Dave Brickman for plumbing and heating. I plan on getting Active Pest Control and their guys on there.

Brad Wazlavek: As I was going to say we've had Active on the show before.

Bill Anderson: Yes, like my brother-in-law, David Lawson, from Dr. Energy Saver. There's a lot of stuff that we know we'll partner up on that when there are some companies out there that are still - you've all heard the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" right? Like Adam you're an electrician, you're a master at it, you know what you're doing, you're an expert - but that's what you do. You're not going to go into basement waterproofing next week.

Adam: No, I don't think so, unless you want me to earn a little bit more money.

Bill Anderson: But it's one of those things that like I'm not going to go be an electrician. Why, because you're not going to be as good because you can't know everything.

Adam: I enjoy working with you guys because I see it on every level, from the office on down, that nobody pretend to step over their boundaries of what they can do or pretends to know everything.

Brad Wazlavek: And that's what I like. When I first started, of course it's almost like nervousness when you start a job, you don't know whose where, you're looking for the clicks and that doesn't really happen in our company, it's pretty crazy. I have a lot of respect after going to a few job sites when they're doing the install. These guys they work hard - like eight, nine hours in a row - it blows me away. I do a crawl space inspection; I'm under your house a half hour or 45 minutes at most. These guys are under there crawling around in dirt and everything else for eight hours. They come home and they do it all over the next day and they love it. To do that kind of a job, that's hard physical work and love it every single day, that just shows the level of dedication you just don't find these days and it really just blows me away. With the whole family aspect of the company you really do feel that way. They have a lot of good constructive criticism whereas some other companies they might come in and they give you some criticism - it's not so constructive. These guys actually take it in because they know it's coming from the heart and that's really a big deal to me - to be able to work with somebody and then respect them enough to actually do that. It's a big deal to me that they have a good company and this is definitely - like I've seen, myself included, a couple of guys come on after the job fairs or whatever and they'll say "You know what? This isn't even a job, this is a career," to hear somebody say that their second day on the job is a big deal.

Bill Anderson: And I think they all really enjoy it. Troy, actually he's looking at me funny, because he keeps holding up a sign that says "Break" so I'm going to let him enjoy his job and not yell at us about staying too long.

Adam: J&A Electric, you can reach us at (302) 943-9894.

Bill Anderson: And we'll be right back folks.

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Male Speaker: Requirements for 19% discount - 10 cabinets minimum, [inaudible 15:45], countertops, cabinetry installation, floor covering material and installation. MHIC number 14298.Male Speaker: Do you work with or are you a member of an organization that provides employment information or job referrals? Any organization that regularly distributes employment information to job seekers or refers candidates to employers is eligible to receive information about our job vacancies. To be contacted when we have jobs available contact Beverly Jones by mail, PO Box 237 Cambridge Maryland 21613, fax at (410) 228-0130 or by email at bjones211@comcast.net. You will then receive periodic announcements of jobs at our stations. MTS Broadcasting LC is an equal opportunity employer.

Brad Wazlavek: Welcome back, once again this is Brad from DryZone here with Bill Anderson and Adam from J&A Electric. We were talking off the air and actually in between last week and this week. I made a comment last week about the smoke detectors being required in each room in a finished basement. I guess what we did is I went back and did some clarification on that but it's not actually in the code and we'll get into that in just a second. I was under the understanding that it was code because when I went to training they had said that. It's international code so it's one code book pretty much for every state, country, or whatever. And then what you have is –

Bill Anderson: Technically.

Brad Wazlavek: Technically, yes - and then what you have is each state in our county is able to interpret that differently. For instance I know in Connecticut they told me they rarely do an egress window which is basically a fire escape for your basement. It's a big window that you can crawl up out of in case something happens. Down here that is required and the weird thing is with the code it's not required. It's very vague so it's open to interpretation. Now obviously it's a good idea to have a fire escape in your basement, I mean obviously that's a good idea, and with us it's not even an option, it has to be done. Let me get back to the smoke detector thing. Adam you were saying that what's the code exactly again?

Adam: The code states that you have to have a smoke detector in a bedroom outside of a group of bedrooms and in a basement.

Brad Wazlavek: Okay, so just one in the basement is code.

Adam: Correct unless you have a bedroom in your basement.

Brad Wazlavek: Right.

Adam: Then you want to get an additional one in there.

Brad Wazlavek: Also, and again to specify too, if there is a bedroom in the basement it definitely needs an egress in that bedroom.
Bill Anderson: But you don't need one out of the bedroom. If you have like a big room in the basement and a bed room down there which the weird part is what constitutes a bedroom is you have to have a locking door and a closet.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, like I said code is very open to interpretation by different people and some things are not, some things are, I leave it up to the code official and most of what they say does make good sense. A fire escape are always a good idea obviously, but if you’re in a bedroom which has to have a locking door and a closet, the fire escape, an egress window, has to be there. Now if you have a bedroom and then a wide open space; you don't necessarily need to have the egress window, but as long as you can get out that bedroom window you're good.

Bill Anderson: One thing that I was talking, actually with our production manager kind of following your egress thing - one thing that we're going to try to start doing is we're going to try to start eliminating that - we use what's called a Rockwell folks and Rockwell it's just a very pretty way of holding back the dirt. When you cut a hole in a window or cut a hole on a basement it's below grade so you have to have some type of a shroud, some type of a well to keep the dirt from obviously flowing into the window. In a fire you're trying to get out as fast as you can and the biggest thing that's going to help you get out as fast as you can is light. We're actually talking about figuring out ways of trying to put lights on the outside on a motion detector, so that way when you're jumping out the window the lights come on, you can actually see where you're going. You can make sure that your wife and your kids are behind you. Those are things that we look at that, I guarantee you most companies don't and that's what's going to separate us between and the other bids that you get. The biggest thing we always talk about in the office, and Adam I'm sure you run into the same problems, is that I don't think a lot of homeowners - it's not that they don't get it, it's just that I don't think they're as informed as they need to be, especially when you're finishing a basement. There's a lot of things that go on, there's a lot of different pieces that go on down there and after a while when you’ve done one, or two, or three different appointments that last two or three hours; you start doing two or three of those things and it all sounds the same, it all looks good, nothing looks really bad. There's a company out there that takes regular fiberglass batt insulation and they glue that to a piece of canvas basically and that's a roll. And when it gets wet they say "What you do is you take your walls down, you lay it out, and you let it dry.

Brad Wazlavek: And I touched on that last week with if you go on YouTube and look up the splash video basement system splash, you can find it but splash should bring it up. It's a very funny video. It's not sort of independently, sort of with us.

Bill Anderson: You know what I'm going to do Brad? I'm going to talk to Catherine, one of the ladies at Basement Systems who helps us with our website. I'm going to make sure that gets actually on our website.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, so if you go to DryZone.com we should have links to most of that stuff already but like I said it's kind of a work in progress. The website actually has come quite far away since even I started almost a year ago. The fiberglass panel is just - they crack me up. When you see that stuff in the water - to kind of let you in - I'm a spoiler here but it starts off like 23 pounds for a panel and like a whole wall down big thing. They soak it in water, it jumps out like 170 pounds, and it’s insane. It's four or five times its weight.

Bill Anderson: It's funny because I had homeowners tell me - and this is how they sell it Adam - you go in there and they take a fork and they stab - they have a sample of it - they go in there and they stab the material with a fork and then they pull it out and then they rub it and all of the fibers go back together because the canvass is kind of like individually woven; so you could actually stab it, pull it out, rub it to where it doesn't really leave a mark. How many people run around stabbing walls with a fork?

Brad Wazlavek: Exactly.

Bill Anderson: With ours you can take a baseball bat and I'm going to tell you right now if you've got kids there's been a baseball bat in your wall, there's been a football impression in your wall, there's been a baseball impression in your wall. My sister took a gold club to me one time and my mom and dad were hot because they came down the basement and there was a golf club sticking out of the wall and my dad's like "What in the world are you kids doing?"

Brad Wazlavek: That's pretty extreme obviously - taking a baseball bat to it - but you really can. Our stuff's made out of concrete and ceramic, it's so hard, and what I like to tell people is "Yes, if you have kids that are whacking your walls with a baseball bat you probably should sit them down and have a talk."

Bill Anderson: You have a son, I was 12 years old, when I was a kid, my brother and I we were making a tent one time outside and my brother ticked me off and I chased him around the backyard with a hammer. I wasn't planning on hitting him. But my dad, trust me, I think my dad was going to hit me with it. It wasn't a good day. But kids are dumb, right? They run around, they have more energy than anybody else in this whole world, and they just start bouncing off the walls. Just look at the ceilings.

Brad Wazlavek: The ceilings, there's always something in there. I was talking about a second ago - not so much your kids are going to take a baseball and then intentionally hit your wall. Incidental contact is not even going to be a problem. If they bump into it, even if it's not even kids, if it's you and a bunch of your friends having a party; if somebody bumps into you, you fall into the wall with a drink. Our stuff glides right off - it's not going to stain - and with the kids again if your kids write on the wall there's a little Mr. Clean Magic Erasers they’re worth their weight in gold, it wipes it right off. We used to take the samples and we write on it with lipstick and we wipe that right off right in the presentation. Ballpoint pen, pencil, anything comes right off.

Bill Anderson: When we first got our dealership for TBF, Total Basement Finishing, my brother-in-law who owns the energy audit and installation company Dr. Energy Saver - David has like four girls, just way too many girls, I felt so bad for him, and now he finally has a son. So, what I did was we took these panels to his house and just normal size, like two foot by two foot or whatever, and we took motor oil and we took lipstick and we took sharpies and we took like everything that the kids could write on with, not that kids are writing with Motor Oil, but we took every single thing that we could think of and put it on there and then wiped it off. I mean sharpies come right off.

Brad Wazlavek: It did, it's just absolutely insane. When I first saw that I was like "What is that stuff made out of?" It was remarkable. And I know if you have dry wall anywhere kids write on those walls, it's a fact of life. If you have this in your basement, and a lot of times you've had people call us up and they want specifically a kids' playroom and you show them that, they're immediately just in love with the wall panel because you wipe that stuff right off like it was brand new.

Bill Anderson: I'm surprised that most people don't have - I mean like I said there's a tremendous amount of unfinished basements out there. We grew up in Colorado, there was no such thing as crawl spaces, so we moved here on Delmarva, it was like 1986 and we moved to Bridgeville. We had this crawl space and we're all mad because where are we going to play. We had no place to play. My dad was like "Well I guess you have to go outside."

Brad Wazlavek: Do you ever go outside?

Bill Anderson: Exactly, I'm like "Okay, well it's the beach, that's cool" and then we realized that tourists come down in the summertime which there's nothing wrong with tourists. That's where we played because it was nice and cool, it was inside, my mom and dad - because now its not like it was when I was a kid. My mom and dad used to let us just roam everywhere. If my daughter's in the mall and she's 12 years old - walking with her friends or whatever, I'm like 10 feet behind staring constantly. I don't let her out of my sight because there's way too many whackos out there and it’s not just a Delmarva thing, it’s not just a Delaware thing, it’s not just a Maryland thing, it's a world thing. There are a lot of scary cats out there.

Brad Wazlavek: That's what - like you were saying - you play in the basement growing up and it's unfinished space. What if you could have that space that kids could play in and the reason why they might have left it unfinished in the ‘70s is because you don't want to worry about the walls getting ruined. Now you don't have to worry about that with Total Basement Finishing panels stuff wipes right off, you're not going to get holes in it, it's amazing. We've mentioned that, I think it was last week, about the weight that the walls can hold, you can pretty much - I joke around if there were mini motorcycles it would pretty much hold it. I don't recommend that but it's pretty funny, it will hold so much weight that you could hang shelves, put all your toys off the floor, and the next thing you know you've got a nice open space that's like a multipurpose room. The sky's the limit with this stuff, it really is impressive.

Bill Anderson: Speaking of little mini motorcycles I have a homeowner that's down in Felton and we did her crawl space and now her crawl space is like six feet high. It was a tall crawl space. You could walk right through it. She actually wanted to put her motor scooters down there. We told her "Ma'am just don't do that." She wanted this great big massive like garage door going into it and she told us "No, it's great for storage, Bill" and I'm like "That's gasoline under your home" and she was like "Okay, never mind." I wouldn't recommend putting motorcycles in your basement.\

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, I would say it's a joke, you never know what people are going to hang on their walls but it's always funny. Really cool stuff, and again we have four divisions, and that's just one of them. The foundation repair is really the next thing I'd like to get into and that's really, really fun. It's a lot more involved in what we're doing now, but that's definitely the next aspect as well. The Total Basement Finishing was a big step for me and the sky's the limit for me as well. Hopefully you'll hear from me in the next couple of weeks or so, we'll see.

Bill Anderson: I'll tell you what, since you brought it up next week and folks grab your pen, grab your papers and all that good stuff because I think we are going to talk about foundations next week. There's actually a couple of really interesting projects that I want to talk about. I've got some really new helical pier projects going on, one where we save the owner of this property tens and tens of thousands of dollars. And then I want to talk a little bit about our Lunch-and-Learn's that we're doing and some of the good stuff. It looks like we've only got about a minute or so left folks. Do you guys have some parting shots; have some parting words of wisdom?

Brad Wazlavek: Like I said I would definitely check us out, DryZone.com. Total Basement Finishing is actually the system and the division so if you want to look that up, it is stuff that's really interesting, a lot of information out there. It's a relatively new way of thinking, but a lot of information out there so definitely check it out, and take a look at the products and if you want, it's actually me that installs for our company. You might actually meet me in person if you want to have me come out and take a look at your basement.

Adam: And I'd just like to add that I've been in this trade over 20 years and it's absolutely amazing to see some of the products that DryZone offers and with the basement finishing and the crawl spaces I definitely would recommend it to anybody.

Brad Wazlavek: Cool, that's always a good endorsement.

Bill Anderson: Why don't we go ahead and give out our numbers here.

Brad Wazlavek: You can also get us on the web at DryZone.com and if you feel like emailing bill he's always available at bill@dryzone.com.

Adam: You can reach J&A Electric at (302) 943-9894.

Bill Anderson: Well it's been a pleasure, I appreciate you both hanging out with me on the weekends, and we'll see you next week.

Brad Wazlavek: Sounds good.

Adam: Sounds good.

Foundation Repair Information

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:38:25 -0400

Male Speaker: It's time for Under Your Home with DryZone. DryZone in Milton,Delaware-your complete source for basement and crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing; 24-hour service - we never sleep at DryZone.

Bill Anderson: It's 6:30 in the morning. I'm Bill Anderson, this is Under Your Home with DryZone. And I actually have still some special guests. I'm not sure why they do it but I definitely appreciate it a lot. I do, I appreciate you guys being here. We're joined with Brad Wazlavek and Adam and I'm still not going to try to pronounce your last name. Adam from J&A Electric anyway - Adam, I appreciate you being here. I know you don't have to get up on the weekends, but it definitely is fun when you're in here so I appreciate it. So Brad, last weekend you said you wanted to start talking about some steel.

Brad Wazlavek: You know foundation is a cool thing because when you think about it, most of what we do is moisture control and things like that. No one really thinks about what happens if you let that go too far. If you let that go too far you're talking about sagging girders, you're talking about rotting wood, and then eventually the actual foundation of your house can get cracks in it and things start to sag. It could start out with something as simple as a door or a window not opening or closing properly, that's a good indicator of it. Little cracks in the corner of the dry wall where the door frame is that could become something very serious, very fast. We actually can take those sagging and failing foundations and either support them, or in a lot of cases lift them back up which obviously, Bill, you're our main guy with that so I'm glad I'm here, I'm going to learn a little bit as well as the people who are listening as well.

Bill Anderson: Basically, here's foundations, we have something sagging, we have something breaking, it's going to come from two things - either the soil underneath your home is eroding or being compressed or you have too much moisture in your wood and that wood starts to lose its expanding capability. So it’s - let me tell you in lay man's terms - when wood gets wet its like when pasta gets wet. When pasta gets wet it gets noodle-y. The exact same thing happens to wood, the only problem is when wood gets wet then mold and mildew and all that other good stuff starts growing on it and when that happens the molds and mildew feed on the wood and grow. Those are really your two things. Like I told you, Brad, that I wanted to talk to you about a couple of different projects that we've got going on. Before we get into that though I do want to make sure that we give everybody our phone numbers here - so Adam you're still our guest so our guests go first.

Adam: J&A Electric - We can be reached at (302) 943-9894.

Brad Wazlavek: You can email Bill if you like, its bill@dryzone.com. I'd give you my email address but my last name is Wazlavek, way too hard to be telling people how to spell it.

Bill Anderson: So, we talked about some different projects and there's a storage place inSalisbury; I don't know if I'm actually allowed to say where it is, but it's over at say hypothetically nearSnow Hill Road. And the whole back wall and this is a long building, I mean this thing is like hundreds of feet long, there are two places in it where underneath the footer it just started eroding. I don't know if it was actually erosion or just compression of the soil, compression is when things compact, so when it's pushing down on the soil it settles. We started knocking off some of the mortar because somebody's tried to patch it over the years and patch it over the years and patch it over the years. We were taking a shovel and we were scraping off the mortar - I could put my whole hand in the wall. It was bad. So, what we were doing was when I first got this phone call the gentleman called me up and well, he talked to our call center obviously and he just told Rob, who's one of the gentleman who acts as our call center manager and he's in charge of the other folks who answers the phones for us, but he was talking to Rob that day, Rob basically took down his information and he set the appointment, but the guy said "Listen, I really need to talk to somebody even before somebody gets out here." So, Rob asked me if I didn't mind taking the phone call and we talked for a few minutes. He was like "Bill, listen, I don't know what to do." He was like "I've had a structural engineer, they're talking about taking down the entire wall, they want to put this one helical pier underneath this footing" which is definitely an acceptable way of doing it. He's like "But I have to move everybody out." He's like "I have no other place to put them. My old place is full. What do I do? Can you please come out and look at it? I need options." He didn't want to have to rent storage heads or have people move because who wants to go move the stuff out of storage at the end of the day - that's just really not an option for most people, it's in there for a reason.

Adam: I've seen storage sheds; those things are packed to the gills.

Bill Anderson: It's not even that, if your garage is full then you put it in a storage shed - that's really why we have storage sheds when we're moving. There's a reason why those places are in business. So I got out there and I said "Okay, why are we replacing the wall?" and he replied "Well because this guy said I should." I said "We’ll let me talk to your engineer." I sit down with their engineers and I came up with a better game plan and this game plan was instead of replacing the wall, the footer, and everything else we were simply going to go underneath there and excavate around the footing in 12 different places and we're going to start driving a helical pier. A helical pier is a great big screw and what we do is we take the excavator out and we have a bucket on it. We dig a hole and the footer is like four and a half feet in the ground so it was actually a big hole, And then we simply notch the footer, we prepare the footer - without getting too technical in detail - we simply made a pocket in the footer and there's a really great big huge bracket that we use that actually goes underneath the footing. But before we put that bracket in, we take off the bucket on our excavator and we attach basically a great big old screw gun. So we put this helical pier, this great big screw, on the end of that gun and we get it - basically we set it correctly so there's a certain way that there's closeness we have to be to the wall, there's a certain torque or a certain amount of force we have to embed these things into the ground. We get all that prepared and we just start screwing this thing down until we reach a certain resistance, or a certain pressure on our hydraulic gauges. Once we reach that pressure we keep putting extensions on and we go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper in the ground until we reach this magical number, which depends on certain events. We have a couple of different numbers that we look for. We screw these things into the ground and then we basically put that great big bracket underneath the foundation and once that's done, we go on to the second, the third, and the fourth and fifth and sixth and this project here is actually six piers, a 30-foot space and six piers. So there are two places along this wall where it was failing and once we got those six helical piers in place we were able to put what's called a ram basically on top of each one of those piers and we're able to lift that whole foundation back up into a level position. We had to put little metal shims in the wall in the motor joints so we didn't close that gap too much, we had to close it to the appropriate level and we simply put enough pressure on that wall and we were able to raise it back up into a level position. Then we locked those piers down and we effectively transferred the weight of that structure from the soils that were failing onto these new piers.

Brad Wazlavek: Wow, that's really impressive. So what you're saying is you put these giant essentially screws in the ground, you're holding this whole building up, and you're able to do that at I imagine less than the cost than what the structural engineer was coming in to do it, right?

Bill Anderson: Well the structural engineer, what they do is they just give you advice. Most structural engineers don't actually perform the work which I think is good because what they do is they try to find the best solution without really having a stake in it. With us, we actually do a lot of educational things with engineers and architects and we perform these things called Lunch-and-Learns. So any engineer who's actually out there listening, any architect that's out there listening, anybody really who wants a presentation done, let us know; we'll come to your office and in an hour we'll have this whole presentation for you. It's not a sales pitch, we're not talking about a huge amount of specific products. I'm not saying WaterGuard, I'm not saying CleanSpace, or SuperSump or SaniDry CXs or 28 helical piers. We're just simply talking in generalities and we actually bring you lunch too. So, if you want to feed your office for free for a day and be a great guy you're more than welcome to have us. You’ll want to call my office; Brad's given the number out before. That's your easiest way to actually get that type of information. So, going back to your original question when an engineer comes out he looks at the problem, he assesses it, and then he actually comes up with a game plan and he says "You need to simply do A, B, C, and D." With us, it's nice because now a lot of engineers are getting to know us and we're doing enough of these presentations that we are actually seeing it actually specked on blueprints. I have a lot of friends in the trades and a couple of my friends are general contractors and engineers will put "You have to use X, Y and Z products in this home" and the contractors are like "Okay I don't know what X, Y, Z product is, I don't understand." They've never had to deal with it, it was something that an engineer heard at maybe even a type of Lunch-and-Learn and it's a great product to use, but now the contractor may have never heard of it. We'll sit down with the engineer and we'll say "Okay, listen, here's what we want to do" they say "Great" on the next house they speck it and if the contractor doesn't know then we can come out and talk to the contractor and say "Listen, this is the type of results you should expect. This is the type of timeline" and normally most of our stuff is done within days, not weeks.

Brad Wazlavek: Wow.

Bill Anderson: Because you've got to think, if somebody's going to out and remove 30-foot sections of a block wall which is eight/nine feet high as it is then you have another four feet below the ground, you have to support that entire structure, you have to tear out floors, you have to dig, you have to pour footings, it's got to dry for a week, it's got to cure at least at some point and then you come back and you put the walls on it. You can't even rest the roof back down on the thing until the walls are dried so then you're another week in the process. We can go out there in a day and screw three, four, five, six helicals into the ground. Like this project5 here it's taken a little bit more time than we had wanted because there's not a whole lot of room to get the excavator back there and we had to jog back and forth. Normally, it should take us less than a week to get 12 done. If they were going to do it the other way you're talking like three or four weeks. And when you start talking like February, March, January - those type of winters people never have to move their stuff, not one material got moved out of that storage shed, not one personal belonging, they kept the inside nice and dry, no dust, we were in and out of there and you get a 25-year nationally backed warranty when it's done. It just makes sense. There are a lot of folks that just don't know what a lot of the different foundation options are nowadays and we're trying really hard to educate the consumers and the people who are educating the consumers on our different products. I've said it before in these shows and I'll say it a million times; an educated consumer makes an educated decision. When I go to buy electrical equipment I had to go - we're doing more video testimonials for our website, we talked about our website last week - I didn't just go out to Best Buy or Staples and buy the first one I saw because it was pretty. I actually went online and I looked at a lot of different reviews because I think reviews are great. That's something that we, actually, do have on our websites. Not just testimonials, but we have reviews; that meant somebody actually went to either Google or Yahoo or Bing or, one of those places, and actually said "I like this company so much that I endorse them." The nice thing about it is, if we were doing something bad it would be on there too, right? So it's something that is truly a third party endorsement that you just can't fake. So, I went on and I started looking for those different things and I made an educated decision. I picked the camera that was in my price range because nobody has unlimited resources, everybody has a finite expense. I went out there and I found the best one that my money was going to buy and that worked well for us. I don’t think I am disappointed with the camera. If you truly follow that philosophy no matter what you're doing in life I think it's going to work. If you can be educated about what's going on in your home, whether it's electricity, whether it's Total Basement Finishing, whether it's foundations or crawl spaces or basements most folks - Brad you're doing crawl spaces too, how many times do you meet a homeowner and you start talking about crawl space vents and why they're so bad and how much moisture and humidity it lets in down here in Delmarva.

Brad Wazlavek: It's a big deal.

Bill Anderson: You do your presentation and then they're like "So do we leave the vents open or close?"

Brad Wazlavek: Sometimes you almost feel that you inundate them too much and you really do have to take your time. It's a lot of information and like me for instance we're still learning little bits here and there. It's a lot of continuing education type stuff. So, for me to be able to sit down an hour, or two hours or however long it takes somebody and push all that knowledge into their brain. You really have to take your time and make sure they understand everything. Those vents, just you touch them real quick and those vents are evil, don't be fooled. The vents actually do like my codes for a few weeks in a row by just touching them real quick. Vent and crawl space eventually is what the code says but it then has some arbitrary number and it doesn't make sense.

Bill Anderson: You know the term or the algorithm they use?

Brad Wazlavek: What was it - 22 vents for 15 beers or something like that?

Bill Anderson: No, for every 150 square feet you have to have 2.2 vents, foundation vents, right?

Brad Wazlavek: We figure with a 150 square foot house you have to have 22 vents.

Bill Anderson: Exactly and I've never seen a house with 22 vents because the code says if you put some plastic or some garbage bag material down you can reduce that number by a huge percentage - like 80% or 90% -- whatever. So then the masons go out there and they say "Well you've got four walls, let's just put two, one in each wall." I mean that's kind of how we do it. I can tell you something else we do, break.

Brad Wazlavek: That's a good segue.

Bill Anderson: You like that segue. So, we do have to take a break folks. Before we go to break I'm going to have Adam give out his information, I'm going to have Brad give out our information and how to reach us.

Adam: J&A Electric at (302) 943-9894.

Brad Wazlavek: Obviously you can catch us on our website; we've been talking about that for quite a while, DryZone.com, something we're really proud of so definitely take a look.

Bill Anderson: So, I know my mom and dad listen to the show, www.dryzone.com. My dad actually you don't have to do the “www dot” anymore but my dad was like "Why don't you ever put the “www dot” in there?" and I'm like "Dad, you don't need to do that anymore" and he was like "Oh really." I showed him the little trick in the address bar. Folks we've got to take a break, we'll be right back.

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Bill Anderson: This is Bill Anderson and our show is called Under Your Home with DryZone. The biggest thing we talked about when I first started this radio show was I wanted to make sure everybody was informed so we try to keep the guests fresh and like I said Adam, I actually don't know how fresh you are at 6:30 in the morning on a Sunday but - not fresh like you stink, just fresh like you're tired but - I want to definitely talk about education, why things are what they are. We were talking about during break you were talking about our SmartJacks, you said that you come in there and you do our outlets for us and you were wondering why we started putting these metal poles I guess in the crawl space.

Adam: I was really curious about that, see what the idea behind that was.

Bill Anderson: Normally you see like a block pier down there, the columns, the block columns, or even sometimes they're port walls or block walls. The whole idea about those, Adam, is you can't just have a piece of wood going from one side of your house to the other because it's too far, it's too long of a span. Bridges can't go on indefinitely; eventually there's a place where it's going to break. So the whole idea with those block piers is to shore it up basically. We're just shortening the distance so nothing fails. The problem is you're normally around when the houses are even framed up you're there. You've been there when they're just doing footings and foundations and all that, right?

Adam: Right.

Bill Anderson: So, if somebody goes in there and they go to dig these footers for the piers what do you normally see them do? Normally it's a guy out there with a shovel, like a mini loader out there with an auger on the end of it. Well it's funny because when you really look at how you design a footing it should really be square. What happens is when somebody starts digging a hole, what would the bottom of the hole look like?

Adam: It’s round.

Bill Anderson: It's like a cone, right? When you have a lot of pressure on this nail, this cone-shaped thing in ground that gets wet, and I'm just going to spend a couple of minutes here this morning. On Delmarva at least Queen Anne's South you don't have that many underground springs. Most folks I meet there say "Well I think I have an underground spring." You really don't. What you have is a high water table. To have a spring you have to have a cavern. It's just water moves through sand. So, when you start getting a lot of rain the ground starts getting very saturated. What does saturation mean?

Adam: Higher moisture content and higher water content.

Bill Anderson: When you learn too much the brain gets saturated, right? When you get too much of something that it can't hold correctly - it doesn't matter if it's knowledge or weather -- if I'm saturated with grease I have too much grease in me. The ground when it gets saturated you have more water in the soil than it should really hold. You have these houses that have a footprint and normally, when it's snowing people are on snow shoes and they're walking on top of the snow. You take the snow shoes off, you sink. The house, the perimeter wall is going to act like this, snow shoes. However the middle where those individual piers are, if the ground gets wet it could act like a nail and get driven into the ground. So you start to see this downward settlement in the middle of your home. You start to see cracks along the crown molding, up in the corners or see nail pops. Your sub floor, your carpet, all of a sudden starts to move down below your base board, you actually start to see gaps in it.

Brad Wazlavek: You see a little gap there.

Bill Anderson: We'll get a phone call, getting the dry wall guy didn't put enough glue in something. He didn't put enough tape. He didn't put enough dry wall mud. He didn't do this. Somebody did something wrong. So, we'll go underneath and we're not just Chuck in the truck and you've heard me use that phrase before. Chuck in a truck is basically a jack of all trade kind of guy. It's just a guy who has a station wagon and a ladder and he's in business. Not that there's anything wrong with people who own station wagons that happen to have a ladder, but when we're going to spend money; I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing and I guess that's another show another day. When we start doing things in our home we should really expect some type of measured success. Adam when somebody calls you out and they have an outlet that doesn't work they have a certain expectation when you leave. They want it fixed, right? They want it to work. And Brad when somebody comes and asks us for a dry crawl space or a dry basement they don't want the illusion of a dry basement, they don't want the illusion of a dry crawls space, right?

Brad Wazlavek: Oh yes, they definitely want to be able to figure that out and see what they paid for, absolutely.

Bill Anderson: They want it to work.

Brad Wazlavek: Exactly.

Bill Anderson: So when Chuck in the truck comes out, I've seen people go out there and buy some junk at Lowe's and not that there's anything wrong with Lowe's, but it's all homeowner stuff. I don't think I'd buy anything at Lowe's, I mean I might buy some drill bits, some hammers, knee pads and maybe hard hats and stuff like that at Lowe's, but that's not where I go to get my building materials. When we set out there and Chuck in the truck's there he buys these light duty jacks, these little low easy and rusty columns in the crawl space that they took a landscaping paver to, something that you walk on to make a patio with, and they jam a couple of those in the dirt or they dig a hole. I will to tell you, right now, digging a hole in a crawl space is rough. I don't care who you are, I mean we have some guys that are fairly short, there's nothing fun about laying on your belly trying to dig a 30-inch hole, it's just not fun. So they get tired after a while and they'll say "Well six inches is probably deep enough," and they might pour some concrete in there, the whole six inches and they put these jacks in. Well, if you actually go to Lowe's and you read the packaging those jacks were only meant to be a light duty structure for a temporary time only. That's the two requirements that it says it has. What is temporary about our home? What is light duty about our home? What happens is these vents that we've talked about before in the past and even touched on today - you let hot humid air into a nice cool crawl space, voila, you're divine, you have made rain a.k.a. condensation. And metal is normally cold, you're going to get condensation on the coldest things. So, it starts to "sweat" and when metal and water mix you make the rust. So, they put them in, two months later Chuck in the truck, he’s got his job back from the state and now you'll never get a hold of them because he was only using a prepaid number in the first place probably. Not that there's anything wrong with people with prepaid phones.

Brad Wazlavek: Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Bill Anderson: Yes, not that there's anything wrong with that. When you hire those types of folks they're going to be ten times cheaper than us probably, but when there's a problem my homeowners can tell you right now that they would rather have paid more than what they needed to than less than what they should have, right? There is nothing worse than re-doing somebody else's work. There's a house that we did up inDelawareCityand what happened is somebody came out there and they dug a six-inch hole and used a Lally Column. You know what that is, right? It's a great big cardboard tube and they dig it out, they dig this hole in the ground, then they pour concrete in it and that's what they make as their footer. So they use Lally Columns, those light duty posts that they use in basements. They took two 2x4's nailed it together and then tried to lift the home with it. I went in there and I'm telling you - the guy had it done like a year ago - Chuck in the truck is no longer in business, the recession took his station wagon, the ladder got repossessed.

Brad Wazlavek: I didn't even nail it in there; you're doing a good job for me.

Bill Anderson: So he called us up and he's like "Listen I can't get a hold of this guy, he won't fix it, I don't know where he is, I don't know if he moved toTampaBayor what, but I need help." When we go out there I looked at it and I'm just like "Really, are you kidding me?" He was like "Billy, I don't know. The guy sounded good.” He did a really good job building the deck and, "He said he could do it" and I'm like "Well probably performed brain surgery, he had to have a little bit of training."

Brad Wazlavek: So, in essence it's like trying to jack up a car with a bumper jack, like trying to jack the whole back end of a car out with a little temporary fix.

Bill Anderson: Yes, and expect it to hold for a while and it was bending, it was moving, it was going - his house was going to fall down. They took out the old original support and this is his main girder, this is the backbone of his house - it was dying, absolutely utterly dying, there was nothing good that was going to happen from this. We got in there and he didn't even realize he had to have permits. So, we called up Delaware City, we got Delaware City's permits after he got New Casa County's permits, if you're in New Casa County, you've got to have a permit for everything. If you go into Dewey, if you have your house power washed you've got to have a permit. So, we got all the permitting for him, we had to dig footers, we had to dig so many footers because we couldn't just take everything out and they do a footing inspection. My production manager was there to talk with him which is, usually, the time we have an inspector on the job. Let's face it folks, this is Delaware City, this is not a bustling town, probably could have gotten away without getting a permit, but that is not how we do business. We make everything legal and right. The inspector came out, and he was like "Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. This is really what they left you?" and they don't know who the guy was and I don't think he had a business license. So this homeowner is paying quite a little bit of money to fix the same solution that he had done not that long ago. We got in there, we dug the footings, we got it compacted, we actually had to remove sections of this girder at a time so his house didn't fall down on them. We had to put I-beams down most of the holes and support it that way temporarily to where we could actually get these footings dug, the new girder was put in its place. We were actually using the appropriate sized girder made out of the appropriate material and lagged together correctly and they were putting a real heavy duty jack in there. These jacks are actually rated up to 60,000 pounds of vertical load. So, when you talk about sagging floors upstairs we can literally raise your home. I've seen houses raised before in five inches that have settled, that's a half foot almost. There are just so many different things that we can do in a home, just make sure you're doing it right. Does it cost a little bit more to have it done right? Yes, but if you need brain surgery you're not sitting there shopping people saying "Listen, I'm going to go and I'm going to alienate myself again. I'm not going to Walmart to get brain surgery done. I will go to Walmart to buy groceries and to buy video games and everything else, but I'm won’t even go to Walmart to get my eyes done, I'm actually going to go to an optometrist that actually has its own building.

Brad Wazlavek: You're on a roll; I love it.

Bill Anderson: It's Sunday morning, it's still a little cold outside.

Brad Wazlavek: I was in a house not that long ago and I think we just got it done not too long ago inGeorgetown, where they actually had the concrete pillars that were built out from the blocks. Someone went in and put supplemental support with those instead of the adjustable jacks. For one, those are great they obviously can't adjust them and when they do adjust them they stick this little itty bitty wooden shims in there. And when you think about that your entire home's weight is resting on a piece of balsa wood, it's very strange to think that's acceptable.

Bill Anderson: You know the funny thing about that is builders are keeping me so busy because literally we go back every single day with a crew that's dedicated to nothing but, they go in there and they will replace those little shims with metal plates.

Brad Wazlavek: Yes, it makes sense to use something that's going to last a lot longer. It's your house, like we've been saying the whole time, what's more permanent than your house? Really, there isn’t much. Like I said with this house the columns were actually so bad and they sunk in the ground so much, that some of them weren't even touching the girder anymore. Some of them were a good three to four inches below the girder and slanting where they're wondering why their floor was bouncing, it's because there's nothing there.

Bill Anderson: All right, you know what else is gone?

Brad Wazlavek: Time.

Bill Anderson: Time, yes, we're out of it. Well folks listen I appreciate you getting up with us, having coffee with us. I guess I owe you two, breakfast for hanging out with me today.

Brad Wazlavek: That's cool with me.

Bill Anderson: I'd say it's wherever you guys want to go. Let's go ahead and give our numbers before we leave.

Brad Wazlavek: I'm just going to keep plugging the website because it's really cool - www.dryzone.com.

Bill Anderson: Adam.

Adam: J&A Electric and the number is (302) 943-9894.

Bill Anderson: Well folks I appreciate it and we'll see you next week.

Male Speaker: You've been listening to Under Your Home with DryZone. DryZone in Milton,Delaware-your complete source for basement and crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing; 24-hour service - we never sleep at DryZone.

What it Costs you NOT to Fix your Crawl Space or Basement

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:11:51 -0400

Bill Anderson: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. This is Bill Anderson bringing you Under Your Home with DryZone and as promised Jason Harmon said he was going to join me this morning so Jason how are you?

Jason Harmon: I'm great Bill. Thanks for asking.

Bill Anderson: We always have some great ideas for you folks, some great questions and some great things we'd like to talk about. So, Jason let's just go ahead and get right into it.

Jason Harmon: Yes, let's go for it Bill. Today we've taken a look at the cost of not fixing your crawl space. A lot of people think “out of sight, out of mind”, well that's not really true, when an issue arises with your crawl space, and there could be a number of issues with your crawl space. The most common issue, is high moisture content, or actually, standing water in the crawl space, but there are other issues as well which we're going to touch on. Heating and cooling bills, deterioration of wood and termites and other health concerns can also rear their ugly head. So, let's start out with talking a little bit about heating bills and cooling costs, Bill.

Bill Anderson: If you remember a few weeks back we had David Lawson in here from Dr. Energy Saver, right? I appreciate outside folks when they come in here and talk to us and like I said, that's why I want to get some other folks in here because we really wanted to do this program from an educational standpoint. When we talked about the heating and cooling David mentioned the fact that it costs a lot more to heat and cool wet air than it does dry air. It's even, in my opinion, a lot more than that because in our last episode, Jason, we had talked about the insulation in your floors, right? And that was one of the questions that a homeowner had, “Why should I pull it down?” and they had heard all of these different things about what they should do, what they shouldn't do, where it should be, why it shouldn't be here. Well when you have say 90-degree temperatures and let's face it, that's what we have around here, at least in the summer time. The whole idea with those vents is to let that air come down into our crawl space. And even in the winter time when those vents are closed they're not really closed because you can go in your crawl space and look right outside. So, when you have that really hot air outside it comes inside. And if hot air truly raises that means that your crawl space is going to be cool and fairly temperate for most of the year, am I right Jason?

Jason Harmon: Correct Bill.

Bill Anderson: So, if that's true we're taking 90-degree air, we're bringing it into a 55, 60-degree crawl space and when you have that type of temperature variance you get condensation. People say "My ducks are sweating and my pipes are sweating" all these things are sweating. Well it's even worse than that, it happens on the inside of the ducts also. If that's true then you're going to have to start worrying about the galvanization because galvanization doesn't, for one, last forever, and two, is a very thin layer on those ducts. Most ducts, at least that I come across, are not galvanized anyway, instead it’s a simple fiber board. That starts getting condensation and we have dust and everything else that's in our house, and that's that. Organic material floats around inside of our ducts and we start talking about molds. If we have all these ducts that are surrounded by 60-degree air and we have an intrusion of 80/90-degree air what's that going to do to the inside of the duct?

Jason Harmon: You're going to get condensation, moisture buildup.

Bill Anderson: Condensation, but it also warms up the air too, right?

Jason Harmon: That's correct, yes.

Bill Anderson: So you're paying to have your house at 60-some degrees and if these ducts are being warmed up, or cooled down depending on the season, that's going to make your heater run longer, your air conditioner run longer, and at the end of the day how much more does that cost you?

Jason Harmon: The thing is, Bill, dry air is easier to heat and it's also easier to cool. If we can condition your crawl space, and control the humidity in your crawl space, it's only natural that your heating and air conditioning costs are going to drop.

Bill Anderson: I talked with David after the show a few weeks back, and one of the things that he said because I asked, "how come my air conditioning bills or my electric bills" because everything in my house is electric, I didn't like gas, I didn't want that option "how come in the summertime my electric bills are only like $80, $90 and I run my air conditioner just as much as I run my heater in the winter time?" and he told me "Because in the wintertime it's far more than just that. Billy, listen there are different coils that get turned on; it works differently. I didn't know the difference. I just figured you turn one thing on, it either became hot or cold or whatever. Well it definitely costs, like you just said, a lot more to heat that wet air than it does dry air. And ever since I had them out to my home I've definitely seen my electric bills go down. They talked more about - even more than I guessed – about ceilings and stuff up inside my house. We did some different things and found out that my own ducts were leaking a lot more than what they thought. The good news is - David pointed out - I had some very, very leaky ducts and at least those ducts, since I have my crawl space encapsulated and conditioned, at least it's helping me keep air inside the building envelope because there's no insulation in my floors, all my insulation I have is on my side walls and my foundation. If I'm not having those different forces affecting the air that's in there it’s better than having nothing, but it was still extremely leaky. So one of the things that we've done since we partnered up with Dr. Energy is we can actually give homeowners that free energy. So, last week we talked about “trust but verify” - that was one of the questions we had if I can remember, Jason. How did it go? It was something about how should they choose the contract or who should they trust - something like that? Well that's one of those “trust but verify” things. You have this third party coming into your home looking at it, they'll be able to - numbers just don't lie and that's why I like math. They're going to be able to tell you "Hey listen it's buttoned up down there,” or “it's not buttoned up down there." I feel it's extremely important that just because I say I'm the expert, just because Jason says, or Kevin, or Johnny, or Burt, whoever your designer may be, we're going to have third parties that can come in and actually check our work.

Jason Harmon: Let's repeat something too to our listeners today, Bill, concerning the air in their home. Approximately 50% of the air that you breathe in the living area of your house is coming out of your crawl space or your basement, whichever you have. Your home is like a chimney, the house is drawing the air up, it comes from your crawl space or your basement up through any little crevices between the floors and the house and goes up through the house and is exhausted out of the vents in your attic space. So, your air is constantly being changed and that air is being drawn into the house from the lower level. If we can condition that air it's going to help from a number of angles - not only your heating and cooling costs, but also the quality of air coming up will be much better.

Bill Anderson: You know Jason you're absolutely right, I couldn’t agree with you more. It's amazing when you really start researching this and it kind of comes back to these books that we send you - a lot of this information that we're going to give you it is a lot of common sense. Hot air rinses just like Jason said. Well, if that's true then you can actually really look at the different forces inside of your house; hot air rises, water goes downhill, there's no ambiguity in that, right? Jason, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a lot of our homeowners had questions before we ever sent them our literature, now they're actually speaking in terms that we talk in because now they're educated.

Jason Harmon: Education's a great thing, Bill, but you can have a lot of book learning and a lot of school housing but if you don't have common sense you don't have a good education and that's what I feel with DryZone they're providing a lot of common sense to our installers and our sales people concerning the conditions they're going to run into when they go out to look at homes and inspect them.

Bill Anderson: Jason, I'll tell you what, let's talk rotted wood - that's definitely one of the costs of not fixing your crawl space, right? We have this damp environment down there and wood and water can cause rotting, right?

Jason Harmon: Oh boy, Bill, when you talk about rotted wood in a lot of cases you're looking at extreme costs to fix it. When you start replacing girders and floor joists you're looking at a very, very high cost so why let your house get to that condition. Get us out of here to take a look at your property and tell you whether or not you need something done to prevent this wood from rotting. We've seen houses where we could take a wooden pencil and stick it through the floor joists, they were so rotten.

Bill Anderson: Jason I tell you we were under a house I guess it was about two or three weeks ago and I was able to actually grab the girder, that's the main backbone of your home, and I was actually able to break all three pieces of the 2x10 off with my hand. I mean this place was gone. I've seen the opposite too. I've been underneath the home and this contractor came out and told the homeowner that they had a wood-eating fungus. We went underneath there and it really wasn't that bad. So, how does a homeowner really know they have wood rot? Let's face it; a lot of homeowners just aren't going to go underneath their house.

Jason Harmon: Most homeowners very seldom ever go in their crawl space and a lot of homeowners are not capable of getting in their crawl spaces, especially, the elderly that can't get down on their hands and knees and crawl through that little opening. And that is what we're here for - if you think you've got a problem call us, we'll be glad to come out. But you know there's another thing you have to think about. You need to maintain your home; at some point in time that house is going to be sold or left to a family member. You're going to pay for that problem one way or another. If you sell that house, and a home inspection is done, and they find all this rotted wood; one of two things is going to happen or one of three things actually - either you're going to lose that buyer, you're going to have to repair it at your cost or you're going to have to drop the price of your home considerably. So, do it now because it's going to be cheaper to do it now than it is 10 years from now.

Bill Anderson: Jason, one of the things that I hate to see; we'll get called out to a house and the price is X and the homeowner says "No, no, no, it's too much, I'm thinking about selling in about a year". I’ll simply say "Okay, call me if you need me." It's funny because a year later and sometimes it's almost to the day or to the month, they'll come back and say "Listen, I've got a buyer, but the home inspector went underneath my home. What do we need to do to get this thing sold?" It just kills me when people spend that much money to fix a home when they could have done it a year ago and actually reaped some of the benefits of it. Some people just absolutely suffer from indoor allergens, whether it's the dust mites or whether it's the molds. Molds are in every 2x4 in your house because anybody that's had a leaky ceiling; they've taken off the sheetrock and they've sprayed some Clorox on the wood and studs and they've kind of fixed the leak and put the sheetrock back. Well it wasn't like the mold was hanging out on the table for it to happen; it was already in the wood and in the sheetrock and everything else. Like Jason said for heaven's sakes don't wait to have the things fixed because, Jason - and correct me if I'm wrong - but one of the biggest things I talk about in my office is, it takes a very long time to go from good to bad, it just doesn't take a very long time to go from bad to worse. Something we'll be talking about in the next few weeks is the actual cost of fixing it now, while it's not a big problem as oppose to in a few years, when it does become a big problem.

Jason Harmon: Bill I was in real estate for quite a few years and we had a saying concerning first impressions. First impressions mean a lot to a buyer when they start looking at a house. An encapsulated crawl space is one of those things that when a buyer sees, that the homeowner has had the foresight to go ahead and encapsulate that crawl space to give him a better living condition, they're not going to try and pick apart anything else in the house that might be a minor issue. On the other hand, if you have a bad crawl space they're going to start looking for everything else that's wrong with the house.

Bill Anderson: Yes, Jason, I've actually had homeowners tell me "Listen Billy my house sold this much faster." There was a lady that we had their crawl space done and later she ended up passing. We got a letter from her son that said "I appreciate what you did for my mom. I don't know if I necessarily agreed with it when we were having it done, but I do now. The biggest reason why we sold this house was because the home inspector went in there and said if these people took that much care of their crawl space you can imagine how well they took care of the rest of the house and this was during that horrible time we had with the mortgage crisis and houses and everything else." This house was able to sell for exactly what the homeowner wanted because of that first impression. The home inspectors I know, that's where they start out because you start from the bottom and work your way up to the top. He went to the crawl space and was like "Wow, I can't believe it looks that good. We're going to have to give them an A." Well Jason, I'll tell you, I think we're actually ready for a break. If you'll hang on through the break I'd appreciate it and folks we'll be right back.

Male Speaker: Your home is your biggest investment and provides warmth and shelter for you and your family. Now is the time to repair your home for the winter weather just around the corner. Do you have a lead basement, water in your crawl space, or cracks in your foundation? DryZone provides waterproofing and crawl space encapsulation products and services all over Delaware and the eastern shore of Maryland. Call DryZone for a free inspection and estimate or log on at DryZone.com/theduck. DryZone will keep you ahead of the storm.

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Bill Anderson: All right Jason, it looks like we are back on the air.

Jason Harmon: Okay, well we're still talking about crawl spaces and let's just don't forget we also do basements too, not just crawl spaces, but today we're really, really hitting the crawl spaces because this is one of the areas that we find a great deal of problems on the Delmarva Peninsula. We haven't talked about termites yet, Bill. Let's talk a little bit about termites.

Bill Anderson: Termites are basically these little bugs - not basically - they are these little bugs, and they burrow through wood to get nutrition and that's how they survive. So it's like us, we don't go to the woods anymore - well some of us do go to the woods to find our mules, but we don't go walking down the road to find our wood, we go to the store - and Jason's laughing as I said that - but termites, their supermarket is wood and that wood has to be wet. Termites don't eat dry wood. Why is that Jason?

Jason Harmon: Well they're eating the cellulose in the wood.

Bill Anderson: As they're eating the cellulose what they're doing is they're actually chewing it up. Cellulose has no nutritional value. So, Jason how many times have you seen termite damage in your life?

Jason Harmon: A lot.

Bill Anderson: Normally you see a whole bunch of sawdust there, right?

Jason Harmon: Correct.

Bill Anderson: If termites eat wood then why is there sawdust there? It doesn't make any sense, right? Like I said we talked about it right before the break - common sense. If termites eat wood why is there still wood when they're done? What they're actually doing is getting the pulp out of the way to get to the mildew, the mulch, and the microbes - that actually has nutritional value. So when you talk to termite guys what's the biggest thing they always talk about? They would say "Get away from the house" got to have molds away from the house because mulch is always wet underneath. It's like sand, sand's always dry on top but you dig an inch or two inches to it it's nice and wet. If we can get that wet wood away we stop termites.

Jason Harmon: And the other thing about termites is, a termite has to return to the ground to get moisture and that's why you see the little tunnels coming up your block walls to the wood members of your house. This little tunnel is made out of mud and the termites build these tunnels to get from the ground to their food source and if you can control moisture here you can prevent termites.

Bill Anderson: Once again, going back to a question I believe we had last week; we make sure that we leave that three-inch place, that inspection place at the top of our systems so that way the termite guys can still fix anything they need to fix, they can still drill the holes, and they actually inject this fog, this pesticide, into the hollow cores of the block to try and kill termites. Now one of the things that we offer folks doesn't happen as much around here, but there are some builders from Pennsylvania and I think from Jersey that come down here and they'll take - blocks are eight inches wide and I've seen them use like a 2x4, 2x6 as their sill plate. What happens is you can actually reach the top of the block and put your hands inside every hollow core. You see it a lot in garages, I don't know why garages are able to be built that way, houses aren't, but we have this thing called a wall cap. Somebody in our company thought "Termites can crawl up here very easily" so, we actually have this clear wall cap that we use that will still allow us to see the termites and it also stops the moisture that comes out of those hollow cores because that's definitely a big spot for moisture. When we do a normal sill plate over top of the normal block we actually seal as many areas up as we can to stop any of that moisture from, like Jason talked about a little while ago, that stack effect. Hot air rises and you're still going to get somewhat of a stack effect even in a concrete column, those hollow cores are inside that block.

Jason Harmon: We've been talking about termites for a while but there are a lot of other little varmints that can live in your crawl space, also underneath your house. Things like crickets, spiders, that sort of thing, even snakes, we run into snakes, we run into mice and rat skeletons when we go underneath houses and by encapsulating that crawl space we're going to basically eliminate those problems also.

Bill Anderson: When we first started DryZone Jason, I was on the radio and somebody asked me what a camelback cricket was. And for those of you who do not know what a camelback cricket is: these things have this little round body or oval body, kind of shape of a football, and they're not more than about an inch big, Jason?

Jason Harmon: At the most.

Bill Anderson: Well they have these spidery legs and they don't jump like a normal cricket, they jump straight up in the air. The first time I was ever in a crawl space, Jason, I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but I stuck my face down in there and I turned my head to the left and these things - there were thousands of them - they were just as far as the eye could see. These cricket things actually freaked me out, jumping in my face. I was in doubt for a second trying to figure out exactly what was on me and that was my first introduction to a crawl space, Jason, but we'll see them a lot in the crawl space and I always make sure that I have something in my hand to get rid of them. When we finish encapsulating the crawl spaces, after about a week or two they all go away because they're just like everything else, we've taken away their food source, and we’ve taken away their moisture. The ground is inherently damp so they can still get moisture out of the ground and if there's no food source and there's no water they die. It's just like us if we can't get any food and if we can't get any water we don't last very long either. So that's my little story for you this morning about camelback crickets, Jason.

Jason Harmon: Okay Bill. So we move along to another concern that is created by problem crawl spaces and that's health concerns. Bill you've probably had some specific things addressed to you by homeowners.

Bill Anderson: You know Jason I have. And we've been doing this a long time; we always hear "Oh I get my grittins. Oh my son has asthma." A lot of times that's a real thing. Sometimes I meet the husband and he's like "The wife - she's just nuts. She thinks that there's a problem so you're here just to humor her." I always invite both parties down underneath the crawl space and I've had some homeowners go underneath there and be like "Oh my God Billy I need to go outside and get a mask, I can't believe how bad this is." Whether it's the asthmas, the allergies, whatever the homeowner has; we can eliminate a lot of those issues.

Jason Harmon: We can help with those issues. We're not saying that by encapsulating your crawl space we're going to cure your asthma or anything that you might have, but there is a very, very good possibility that it is going to help to eliminate some of the problems that you presently have. We talked earlier about dust mites, the number one allergen, that is something that can be easily taken care of, and all of the other things that are coming up with the air out of an unconditioned crawl space getting into your house can be causing you some problems. And if we can clean up that air and we can condition that air and your crawl space there's a potential that we can help with some of your health issues. As I said earlier we're not going to cure them, but we think that we can help with them.

Bill Anderson: Yes, I mean at the end of the day, Jason, dust mites, that's the number one indoor allergen and I can't stress that enough, because if we can actually eliminate the number one indoor allergen imagine how much healthier we can actually be. I'm not this great big green guy who runs around and I smoked for a long time, I had a great big old greasy cheeseburger before I got here this morning and when you talk about these dust mites I mean they're just horrible little creatures, they look like little ticks under a microscope. Really it's what they are because they're parasites. They live in our bed and they live in our couches and they eat our dead skin. Jason you so eloquently put it last time we're actually allergic to their droppings, there's nothing like laying in a bed with a whole bunch of bug droppings in it, right? It's kind of gross, but when we breathe that; people who are allergic to it really suffer. I've seen people - I mean we've all heard of Erin Brockovich and she won some big cases and I think she actually was involved in a case in her own home, which had black mold everywhere. I tell homeowners I'm color blind so black mold, green mold, purple mold, blue mold -- it doesn't really matter, the only really good mold is in pizza, cheese, and beer, right? When you have these molds in your house I don't think homeowners should necessarily freak out and rush their kids to the Marriott for a week while we're working. I just think you need to start addressing those issues because it comes down to a time, Jason, where we can't keep our head in the sand. And when we talk to homeowners common issues like, "Listen, my dad lived in a home for 50 years and they didn't have mold. Why do I have it?" Well, I answer a lot of those homeowners, "Your dad's house was built in 1940, right? The wood they used in 1940 was a lot hardier than it is today." Jason you were in the lumber business for 110 years, how did the woods look when you were young as compared to now?

Jason Harmon: Bill years ago a lot of wood was cut locally and they were using the better woods like oak which is a very hard wood and they did not have the laminate materials that we have today which contain different kinds of glues and we were using more solid products than laminated products. And the method of construction back then actually was not as good as today because the houses weren't sealed as well which actually made them ventilated. Today, we find this is not a good thing. Back then they didn't have the products that we have today for insulation and floor coverings and that sort of thing.

Bill Anderson: But there were no mechanicals down there either.

Jason Harmon: There were no mechanicals underneath the house either. We had a space heater or a wood stove to heat the house. So, it was a totally different situation than it is today.

Bill Anderson: Jason my father-in-law ended up redoing his house, he had to dig his house out, take out all of his floors and all the floor joists just so we could get to the crawl space. When he was younger my brother-in-law actually had - and he was a small guy really, really small - apparently he was the only one who could fit under the house so he always underneath this house. He dug this little channel all the way around from where the electric panel was; for whenever they needed to fish wires up. What we did was we ended up dropping the level of the crawl space down. We actually ended up building and almost lifted up the house, put a new foundation in and had that crawl space a lot deeper in the ground just to fit the different mechanicals that he needs now. He just had like this great big pellet stove that they used - it used to be a wood burner stove, now it's a pellet stove - and he said when he was doing this he wanted the geo-thermals and all that other good stuff in his house. That requires room, that's the reason why contractors are starting to dig down into the ground because it still makes the houses look like they were a long time ago. When they do that you have different environments than we had in 1940 and 1950 because we just didn't have the HVAC and all that stuff running through the house and that's a big reason why we're getting more condensation. We've introduced unnatural things into a space that was really never meant to be ventilated.

Jason Harmon: Well not only that, but we have a very high water table here on the Delmarva Peninsula and as crawl spaces were deepened and basements were put in; there's the potential for more moisture access into those areas as we get closer to the water table. In fact, the water table here on the peninsula has actually risen over the last few years and we strike water at a lesser depth than we did years ago.

Bill Anderson: Yes, I know, down in Ocean Pines whenever we do foundation work we're in water at 18 inches and that's even during the droughts. You're absolutely right when it comes to that. Things are just different than they were 50 years ago. Things change, things move. One thing that doesn't change Jason though is our phone number, right?

Jason Harmon: That's correct, Bill, that remains the same.

Bill Anderson: You can also reach us at DryZone.com/theduck and we always ask for people to email us, let us know what they're thinking, if they have any questions or whatever. My email address is bill@dryzone.com.

Jason Harmon: My address is Jason@dryzone.com.

Bill Anderson: They make it that easy for us, don't they?

Jason Harmon: They sure do.

Bill Anderson: Everybody else in the office has a lot of different numbers in it. I don't think they think highly of us, Jason, they make it easy for us.

Jason Harmon: Bill, you mentioned earlier that things are different today than they were years ago. The good thing is that products are progressing to the point where we could control these conditions that we didn't have years ago.

Bill Anderson: Well Jason one thing we can't control is the time that we have left this morning. Jason, I will see you next time.

Jason Harmon: Great Bill, good to see you.

DryZone Honored in Dover Delaware

Tue, 08 May 2012 09:04:07 -0400

May 4^th 2012 was a big night for DryZone as they brought home another award. Most of the time we are honored for crawlspaces we fix or foundation repair solutions, this time we have received an award for thebest website from the Home Builders Association of Delaware Sales & Marketing Council for the 20th Annual Regal Awards Gala held in Dover Delaware at the Sheraton Hotel 1570 North DuPont Highway.

An informed homeowner will make an informed decision, which has been DryZone’s philosophy since Bill Anderson and Gary Lawson founded it in 2006. The internet is a great way to give our homeowners as much information as we can said Lawson, most people will search out what is wrong in their home and the internet is where most people begin their search. DryZone’s marketing department works side by side with the “Tree House” on how to effectively build and maintain their website, “this award not only belongs to DryZone, but with everyone at Basement Systems” Anderson was quoted telling everyone at the Regal Awards .

Our website will continue to show homeowners how to fix water or moisture in their crawlspaces and basements, or how to fix their sagging or broken foundations or floors. DryZone covers all of Delmarva including Wilmington, De/ Bridgeville, DE / Eden, MD and Salisbury, MD

Where is all of that water comming from?

Tue, 01 May 2012 16:35:57 -0400

As the spring turns to summer the heat and humidity will return, and so will the damp crawlspace we have noticed last year. Fixing a crawlspace can be done in stages over time or all at once, when DryZone send an inspector to your home you can rest assured that a certified waterproofing professional would inspect your home. Most problems in the crawlspace can be taken care of without much notice to the homeowners.

DryZone is the largest installer of crawlspace vapor barrier on the shore, we cover all of Sussex, Kent and New Castle Delaware and all of the counties on the Maryland Eastern Shore, including Wicomico, Worchester, Somerset, Dorchester, Queen Anne’s, Kent and Cecil.

Water under the home

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:13:49 -0400

Water in your crawlspace is a major concern for homeowners on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, an Easton homeowner asked DryZone out to look at the problems that they were having. John the Senior Designer for DryZone showed up on a Saturday morning. He performed a free inspection of the crawlspace; many pictures were taken along with moisture readings of the air and wood. When John emerged from that forgotten space below our feet, he had some good new and some not so good news to report. You see the sump pump installed by a plumber a few weeks back was nothing more than a 5-gallon bucket with a cheap plastic pump in it, most of the water in the crawlspace was not even making it to the sump.

John explained that the water needs a way to get to the sump pump most people refer to this type of system as a “French drain”, he also showed them many types of crawlspace drainage systems. John likes to use the analogy “it’s like a gutter for your crawlspace” and DryZone has a drain, made specifically for this type of space. Hydrolink™ will direct the water coming in from your foundation or the hydrostatic water coming into the crawlspace and send it right to the Smart Sump®. Along with our unique inspection ports, you will never have to worry about your new drains clogging

When this step of fixing the crawlspace is complete John showed the homeowners how to keep it dry with CleanSpace® the only real crawlspace vapor barrier on the market today. DryZone offers all of our homeowners a 25 year nationally backed warranty, along with the comfort knowing Basement Systems the manufacture of CleanSpace® have certified the installing crew. DryZone is the full dealer for all of Talbot County including Saint Michaels, Oxford, Trappe and Cordova

Is the chimney leaning?

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 07:43:54 -0400

We were asked by a Seaford, DE homeowner to look at a leaning chimney, the solutions that were given to him ranged from a complete tear down and rebuild, to a guy coming in a placing a bottle jack like you find at Napa under the footing to “jack up” the chimney. The homeowners needed a permanent fix to this problem, so they spent days looking for a real foundation contractor. They chose a local foundation contractor DryZone to come look at the issues that they were having.

The appointment was set for the following week, and Bill Anderson co-owner of DryZone showed up to the home to perform his inspection. Bill stated that he sees this type of problem a lot on Delmarva, “chimneys are a big problem” like this home the contractor who built the chimney did not even use straps to hold the structure to the home. You see the top of the chimney started to lean away from the home; he was lucky that it did not topple over. With the hurricane last fall and the earthquake we had, the home was in desperate need of repair. Bill determined that they would need two new helical piers that would have a heavy-duty bracket installed under the chimney. Once this is performed, we can then lift and rotate the structure back to a level position.

The crew showed up Monday morning, they unloaded the excavator and got to work. We first dig out around the footing and then had to prep it, the Forman then realized a major flaw in the construction, the footing was extremely narrow less than 6 inches. Within four hours, both helical piles were embedded to the appropriate pressure, and the lift can proceed. The entire chimney made its assent to the roofline, and with a few pushes of the button on the hydraulic pumps, the chimney made its way back into position. The homeowner was overjoyed that his entire home was now stable and with the twenty-five year warrantee that DryZone gave him he can sleep easy even during a hurricane.

So how much does a new HVAC system cost?

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:17:16 -0400

I am asked this question on almost a daily basis, so why would you put your heating and air conditioning equipment in the crawlspace. Most of the time it is because it was cheaper, or the contractor did not want it in a closet in the main part of the home, maybe it could not go in the garage. Therefore, we are going to place it in the least desirable pace in the home… the crawlspace. During the summer, the humidity in Delaware and Maryland get to be very high and with the foundation vents, that we have been told to open over the years the air just comes pouring in. The only problem is that air in the home will rise (at least the hot air) so we are left with cold air under the home. So when you have warm or hot air that is laden with moisture (aka humidity) you will begin to have condensation forming on any cold surface, an hvac system is more than cold enough.

Therefore, we go back to the original question “How much does a new hvac system cost?” I have gotten answers from $10,000 and up. One of the main reasons a system can break down is the unit has rusted out! Literally, the whole bottom can give way and the unit falls apart. So by placing a new vapor barrier like the CleanSpace crawlspace encapsulation system in the home, you air conditioning systems can last even longer.

DryZone has satisfied homeowners from Pocomoke Maryland to Wilmington Delaware and from the bay to the ocean, Call DryZone at 1-855-DRY-ZONE to schedule your free inspection or visit us on the web at dryzone.com

Basements: Moisture, Water Issues, Causes & Solutions

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:02:27 -0400

Jason Harmon: Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is Jason with DryZone bringing you today again another episode of Under Your Home with DryZone. Our co-owner of the company is not able to be with us today. Bill is busy other places. But I picked up a friend here named Troy and he's going to be sitting with me today and sort of walk through some of these things with me. And before I forget it let me give you some contact information. You can reach DryZone on the web at www.dryzone.com. On past shows of Under Your Home with DryZone we've talked a lot about crawl spaces. Today our topic is going to be basements - the moisture and the water issues, the causes and the solutions. On a previous show we talked about a house being like a chimney. We called this the stack effect - drawing air from the bottom, rising through the house, and exiting through the vents in the attic. This effect takes all the bad things from your basement and distributes them to the house causing issues in the living area and eventually reaching all the way up to the attic.

Troy Hill: First of all Jason once again thank you for letting me be a part of Under Your Home with DryZone and as I stressed last week in the show I love doing this show with you and here's the reason why. I open the door, I go inside, and I turn on my radio, I play with the dogs, and I think that's called home, that's my home life, but really there are certain things that I should be checking whether it's in the summer time, whether it's once a month, whether it's every week or something -- there are things in my home that I should be checking that I'm really not aware of but you're educating me on this. Last week we talked about the crawl space. I thought that was just something that the guy goes down and look at when he's working on the heater or the plumber comes in and he's looking for a pipe that he can't get from upstairs, he goes - that's his job. Actually that's my job and today we're focusing on basements so I have one of those so I'm looking forward to asking a couple of questions about the basements, what kind of issues in the living area of a house that we talked about, but the smell can cause this?

Jason Harmon: Troy, there are things that you might not associate with being caused by a damp or wet basement and some of these negative effects are dust mites for one thing. A dust mite is the number one allergen in the United States. Another thing would be sticking swollen doors and windows -- moisture from your basement comes up through into the house causes the wood to swell and then you've got problems with your doors and your windows not opening properly. Another thing is smelly carpets - you've probably had that damp musty odor that you've noticed. Well, most likely it's coming from your basement. If you have hardwood floors another indicator of a wet basement would be buckling hardwood floors. And you sure don't want your hardwood floors to buckle because hardwood is extremely expensive to put in these days and you want to be able to maintain that without any problems. Condensation, mold, and rotting in your attic is another item. As humid air escapes into your attic it can condense against the cold ceiling and on the roof and cause moisture problems in your attic. In the main living area of your house you might notice frost or condensation and mold on the inside of our windows in cools weather. This is not a good thing. Also something that is really going to hit your pocketbook is an increase in your cooling bills because damp air takes more energy to cool and the same thing with heating, damp air takes more energy to heat than dry air. You might not think of that mold upstairs but in your attic is where all this air winds up and it's going to be condensing there and can create a mold issue in your attic space. It will also decrease the life of our roof sheeting and your roof shingles. If you were listening to our program concerning crawl spaces a week or so ago we talked about the wood underneath your house absorbing water. This is the same thing with your roof sheeting and in the attic. When the moisture becomes too great in the attic that sheeting is going to absorb moisture and eventually it's going to cause it to deteriorate. The moisture escapes through your house also and if you have painted items on your house whether it be trim or even your siding it's going to decrease the life of your paint on the house. And people who have asthma or allergies these items are going to be aggravated also. Now let's talk a little bit about the construction of a basement. When a contractor starts to build a house that will have a basement he first digs a hole in the ground that's several feet wider and longer than the house will be. A concrete footing is poured and this footing is going to determine the length and the width of the basement. It's wider than the walls will be and will support the basement walls. The walls can be concrete block which is the most common method in our area, poured concrete which is being found a lot in new construction these days, precast concrete sections and stone or brick. Stone or bricks are usually found in your really older homes that are hundred years or more old. Today we're going to be talking about basements constructed from concrete blocks since that are the most prevalent method in our area. Once the walls are in place a black card coating paint is applied to the outside and this is usually done with a brush and this is called damp proofing and it's supposed to keep dampness form penetrating through the blocks but it does not bridge wall cracks. It doesn't stop water completely and it doesn't last forever. A better method is a sprayed on waterproof coating but here again it doesn't last forever. As a result at some point in time there's going to be water penetration through the blocks. The water will collect in the cores of the blocks and eventually find it's way into the basement either through the blocks or through the joint where the blocks meet the floor. Now don't get me wrong - not all basements leak - but all basements should have a dehumidifier to control the humidity and I'll discuss this a little bit later on in the program. Now on the inside the concrete floor is poured after the walls have been constructed and sometimes there's a board or a piece of Styrofoam that's placed against the wall before the floor is poured and removed once the concrete is secure. Now this creates what's called French and it's supposed to catch any water coming through the walls and carry it to a sump pump. The problem is that a French drain in addition to collecting water also collects dirt and debris and clogs up preventing the water from flowing to the sump pump.

Troy Hill: If you just tuned in you're listening to Under Your Home with DryZone. I'm Troy Hill along with Jason Harmon and of course we're talking about different types of issues and this week we're talking about the basement. You can reach DryZone with any of the questions that you hear me ask today or Jason explained.

Troy Hill: I want to go back just a bit when we were talking about issues in the living area and we were talking about mold on the windows, damp and smelly carpets, you've got doors that are sticking and different types of things like that which are things as a homeowner we should be looking out for. Do you find this in older houses or more in today's homes that are being build today?

Jason Harmon: Actually we find them in both, Troy. The newer homes today are a little bit tighter than the older homes were and this sometimes causes in increased problem in the mold and the condensation. Some of the older homes are kind of drafty and it's letting this condensation out but we find this condition in both old and new homes.

Troy Hill: Let's say my doors are sticking. Seriously as a homeowner I'm going to say "All right, go give me something and I'm going to sand this down a little bit" bam, it's done, the problem's fixed in my mind.

Jason Harmon: In your mind it has Troy been fixed but however this condition actually can be caused from a couple of different things. Number one would be moisture, excess moisture; number two is something that we'll talk about in the future on another program and this is a settling problem due to your foundation settling. But today we're going to be talking about the moisture issues. Now one mistake a lot of people make is that they will go in and they will trim off a door. And what they are doing is to make the door fit the opening because it swelled but what they don't do usually is to put a coat of paint of a coat of varnish over the top of that area that they've just cut off and if they don't do that it's just going to allow more moisture to penetrate into that door. So they've temporarily fixed the problem but not permanently.

Troy Hill: You got it. So as a homeowner, ladies and gentlemen, the carpet has this little damp smell to it - be a little concerned especially if you have a basement, buckling hardwood floors, be concerned if you have a basement, these are things that you should be looking at constantly.

Jason Harmon: Yes, Troy, a home is a major, major cost in most people's lives today and it's something that needs to be maintained. And it doesn't take a lot to keep an eye out for these little things that might indicate that you have a problem and if you address these things right off the bat they can save you a lot of money in the long run.

Troy Hill: You've got it. Now we just talked - well actually you talked about it and told us about the construction of the basement. What do you find are the most common causes of water leaking into the basement?

Jason Harmon: Troy, there are a number of causes and they're varied that we find but some of the most common ones are the settling of dirt around the foundation. As I said earlier when the basement is constructed a big hole is dug and once the walls are up the contractor comes back in and he backfills the dirt around the walls. Now this is what we call non-virgin soil, it's been disturbed, and eventually this soil is going to continue to settle for actually a number of years after it's backfilled and what happens when this dirt settles is that the water is running toward the house when it rains rather than away from the house. So it's actually going to run down beside your basement walls and this is one of the problems where the water is penetrating into the basement. Another one is what we call hydrostatic pressure and this sort of goes along with the water running toward you house. When it's raining and the water can’t get away from your house it's going to soak into the ground beside your house and you might think of this as a column of water. Well that column of water is going to create pressure and this pressure on the water is going to cause the water to go someplace and the most likely place for it to go is in your basement. The old saying "water seeks the scores of least resistance." And another place it's going to find is the cracks in your block walls. Now cracks are common in basements and they're due to settling and if there is a crack in your block wall this is a good place for water to be able to get in. Another thing that is not addressed properly in most homes is the ceiling of pipes that go through the wall. We all have water pipes and sewer pipes that go through our basement walls and if these are not properly sealed around them then water can penetrate through these also.

Now we live on the Delmarva Peninsula, it's a great place to live. However, we have a very high groundwater table here and this also tends to create hydrostatic pressure from underneath the floor of your basement and it can force water up through any crack that might be in your floor, it can also force water up through the crack where the floor joins the wall. Now one thing a lot of homeowners fail to do and that is to keep their rain gutters cleaned out. Clogged rain gutters are a big problem. Once they become clogged the water is going to spill over and be deposited right next to your house, it's going to soak down and it's going to find its way eventually into your basements. Downspouts are another issue that we find a lot of people do not properly dump their downspouts away from the house and all the water coming off the roof here again is deposited right beside the foundation wall and eventually is going to find its way into the pores of the block and then into your basement. We had talked at one point in time about exterior footing drains. Now these were drains that were put in around the perimeter of the house when the house was being built and we had talked earlier about these drains becoming clogged. Well when an exterior clogged drain around the perimeter of your house, when it clogs up it creates the problem that the water is no longer being ducted away from the house. So here again the water can't get away, it's going to find a way into your basement.

Troy Hill: Now are these things that can be addressed by DryZone and can be corrected?

Jason Harmon: This is a definite yes, Troy. Some of these things can be taken care of by the homeowner such as grating and plugging gutters and downspout extensions but the major things are what DryZone specializes in and we've been very, very successful in creating dry basements from unusable wet basements. And while we're talking about his just a little bit a lot of people don't stop to realize that the basement is a lot of good usable space if it's dry and it’s a lot cheaper than adding that same amount of space on as an addition on the main level of our house. So if you have a dry basement that can be finished into a family room, maybe even a bedroom, another bathroom. And you've got a lot more living area added to your house at a much smaller cost.

Troy Hill: So get it fixed.

Jason Harmon: Get it fixed.

Troy Hill: Get it fixed. We've got to take a commercial break but before we take a commercial break I want to give out a phone number where people can call and get any information or if they're experiencing some of the things that we talked about and they want to get in touch with DryZone. Let's give out a phone number where people can call and get more information.

Jason Harmon: They can check us out on the worldwide web at www.dryzone.com.

Troy Hill: Okay, we're going to take a commercial break and we'll be back with more of Under Your Home with DryZone.Male Speaker: Do you want cut energy costs and save up to 20% of your heating bill each month. Let DryZone show you how. DryZone will install a clean space encapsulation system in your crawl space and save you money. When you crawl space is encapsulated by DryZone your heating system won't work so hard, your tile and hardwood floors won't be cold, and your crawl space becomes great for storage. DryZone offers interest-free financing for 18 months. Don't be left out in the cold, we are online at DryZone\theduck.com.

Jason Harmon: Welcome back to Under Your Home with DryZone. This is Jason and with me today is Troy and we have been talking a little bit today about basements and the causes and problems that we have with moisture in basements. And down the road here a little bit we're going to get into the solutions for some of these problems.

Troy Hill: Earlier in the show, Jason, we talked about the clogging of the exterior footing drain. What are they and how do we unclog them?

Jason Harmon: Troy, sometimes a contractor will place a corrugated pipe with either holes or slots in it around the outside of the basement footing to collect water. However, this pipe will tend to clog up with dirt over a period of time and since it's six or seven feet underground there's no way to get to it to clean it out without excavating around the entire house. Now excavating around the entire house is really an impractical issue because you're going to be disturbing shrubbery, sidewalks, decks, porches, air conditioning units, anything else that's around the house. And as a result once clogged these drains seize to take away the water from the foundation and actually become useless.

Troy Hill: I've heard you use the term hydrostatic pressure. Sometimes you have to explain on line a 9th grade level. Help me out, what does it mean.

Jason Harmon: Troy, it's not really too difficult to understand but let me take a stab at it. The soil around your house has void spaces in it and during a rainstorm these void spaces are temporarily filled with water; the greater the amount of water the greater the pressure that's exerted causing the water to find its way into your basement. Hydrostatic pressure can also be caused by high groundwater table and cause water to be forced up through your basement floor. Now don't forget concrete is porous and a good example of this is when you place a cardboard box on your basement floor. The basement floor appeared perfectly dry when you placed the box there but after a period of time the bottom of the box becomes wet and disintegrates even though the floor around it still appears to be dry. What's happened is it has drawn moisture through the concrete floor.

Troy Hill: Is it possible at all to have a perfectly dry basement and then all of a sudden it starts leaking after I get all the boxes down there and I say "It's finally dry" is it possible that it could start leaking again?

Jason Harmon: It sure is, Troy. We recently installed a water management system in the basement of a home that the owner had purchased new almost 20 years ago and had never had any kind of a water issue until recently. And in fact he was just ready to start finishing his basement when he discovered that he had a water issue, actually water flowing across his floor. Fortunately for him it was discovered before he did the finish work in his basement. Had it been discovered afterwards he would have had a major cost to go in and tear at walls and redo his basement.

Troy Hill: Now last week on the show we talked about the crawl space and I said "When is the best time to go and look at the crawl space and get a good feel?" and you said "Sometimes usually in the summer time because the moisture's at the highest, we should at do that at least twice a year to go do that." For someone who has a basement and doesn't use that space but just use it as a storage area and they'll probably only go there once a year when is the best time to go and look for different types of things like leaks and how often should be as homeowners look for this type of stuff?

Jason Harmon: Troy you should really be keeping an eye on your basement on a regular basis. I like to go in a basement every week actually if it's nothing more than to just take a look around. But the major times when you're going to see a problem is during and after a heavy rainstorm and this could occur any time of the year around here and another time is after a snowstorm. Snow piles up around your house, starts to melt, and all that water is going down around the house - it's got to go someplace.

Troy Hill: And this is true. Jason Harmon: And this will be a good indicator that you might have a problem if you start to see any moisture at all coming through your walls or up around the floor of your basement.

Troy Hill: So at least once a week we should go down in the basement, look around, check it out, and especially after a rainstorm, in the winter time during snow because -- that's a good point - once that snow starts to melt I hear people say "Boy, if this were rain we'd be in big trouble." Well you have a basement you may be in big trouble.

Jason Harmon: This is true, Troy. But you know the other thing too why you should go into your basement on a regular basis? You never know when you might have an issue with a leaking pipe.

Troy Hill: This is true.

Jason Harmon: And this is not a problem that's caused from the outside but it's an interior problem and just keeping an eye on things will ensure that you're going to maintain your house in a manner which is going to maintain the value of the home.

Troy Hill: Is there such a thing called half of a basement? We should be looking at that too also.

Jason Harmon: Part of the house has a basement under it and the other part of the house has a crawl space? Troy Hill: This is true, yes.

Jason Harmon: Yes, this is very common in this area where there will be a basement under a portion of the house but not the entire house. And here again you should not only keep an eye on your basement but also on your crawl space. In a construction like this a lot of times there's an access panel from the basement to the crawl space area from within the basement so it makes it a lot easier than having to go outside and open up a door to take a look at the crawl space area but definitely keep a look underneath your house.

Troy Hill: So whether it's a half basement or whether it's a full basement. Do they call it a half basement? Is that what they call it or do they have another term for it?

Jason Harmon: Partial basement usually is what you use.

Troy Hill: All right. I just owned a home you know. I want to stress this - as a homeowner these are things that we should be looking for and the way the market is right now a lot of properties are up for sale, keep this in the back of your head because when you go to look at a piece of property you should take what we have talked about into consideration when you're looking at a property too.

Jason Harmon: This is very true, Troy. Today's real estate market is unlike anything we have seen for a long, long time. It's a problem where houses are not selling and if you need to sell or want to sell your home it needs to be in pristine condition. And if you have a basement that is dry this is a big plus when selling your home.

Troy Hill: This is true.

Jason Harmon: If you have a basement that is wet or even damp you can look at least a 10% less value for that house.

Troy Hill: Because people are probably thinking it's going to cost me to fix this dampness in the basement.

Jason Harmon: This is true. Troy Hill: So I'm going to take it off the price of this house so I can make sure that I cover it - it's probably what they're thinking. Now let's talk about how you go about controlling the water coming into the basement.

Jason Harmon: Troy DryZone uses quality state-of-the-art products to ensure a dry basement and be able to give you a 25-year nationally backed warranty.

Troy Hill: Say that again.

Jason Harmon: 25-year nationally backed warranty. Now let me explain that just a little bit because people are a little skittish about warranties because Chuck in the truck comes in and he says "I will waterproof your basement and I'll give you a warranty on it." Chuck in a truck might not be in business tomorrow or next year. Our warranty is nationally backed. The company that we purchase our products for will back our warranty should DryZone no longer be in existence, whether it be the owners retired or whatever. So what we do is when we purchase these products we pay a little bit for them for the company to back us should DryZone go out of business. Now should this ever occur what will happen is that they will send in another dealer from another area - for instance New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, or Virginia - depending on where you're located or depending on where this dealer will come from and he will service the warranty. So is very important when you're talking to any manufacturer or any business about a warranty is who backs it if you're no longer in business. Well back to the issues of taking care of the basement here. When we get ready to waterproof a basement the first thing we need to do is to determine where the water intrusion is occurring. Now usually it's through the walls, through the crack where the floor meets the wall, or both. And what we do, we cut the concrete floor back from the wall eight to ten inches and expose the top of the footing. Then we install a product called water guard and this is installed on top of the footing in a bed of gravel around the perimeter of the basement. Now the water guard is designed to accept water from the wall as well as water from under the floor. The water guard's connected then to a quality sump pump and once installed concrete's poured back over the water guard and it becomes almost invisible. The sump pump then is piped to the outside and away from the house to get rid of the water that's collected by the water guard.

Troy Hill: Now see I learned something because you said it's placed outside away from the house - notice he said that - when you use that sump pump away from the house because if it's too close to the house it's probably going to run back in.

Jason Harmon: This is true, Troy. We like to see the outlet at least 10 feet away from the house and we have a couple of different types of ends to go on these outlets. Our ground around here is pretty flat so we don't get a lot of pitch sometimes so if it's pretty flat we use what's called a popup drain and this is placed with your ground and when the sump pump kicks on the water forces a little lid to pop up and lets the water discharge. Now if you have some slope to your yard we can install what's called a landscape outlet and this is a slotted outlet which allows water to escape from the pipe. Now while we're talking about this let me explain something that DryZone does that no other installer does it that I'm aware of. When we're ducting this sump pump to the outside, once we go through the wall - the pipe is an inch and a half going through the wall - we install then on that pipe what's called an ice guard. Now an ice guard is designed to allow the water to escape should the pipe going away from the house become clogged or freeze up in the winter time. So if it ever becomes clogged or frozen you don't want that water to back up in your sump pump so this ice guard allows it to escape. Now once the ice guard is installed then the pipe is converted from one and a half inch to four inches so the pipe going away from your house is four inches in diameter. Now I said that we like to do it at minimum of 10 feet away from the house - we can carry this pipe even further away from the house if it's necessary or if the owner desires it. The farther away from the house you can get it the better off you are.

Troy Hill: Well Jason, listen we're running out of time but I want to give out the website address is www.dryzone.com. How about giving out some email addresses in case someone wants to email you or bill to talk about anything that we have discussed here this morning?

Jason Harmon: We look forward to hearing from you. Please give us a call or email us with any questions you might have. Troy Hill: I look forward to talking with you next week.

Jason Harmon: Good Troy, I look forward to it.

Steps to Waterproofing Your Basement

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:47:26 -0400

Jason Harmon: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Jason bringing you Under Your Home with DryZone. Today I have a guest with me. Troy is going to be here to ask me some questions because he's a homeowner and he might have some of these same issues that we're going to be talking about. Now last week we were talking about basements and we're going to continue with that this week. And we wound up our show last week by talking about how we installed a product called water guard around the perimeter of your basement in order to capture the water that's penetrating through your walls and up through the floor and ducting this water guard into a sump pump to expel the water away from your house. And today we're going to continue along these lines and we're going to be talking a little more about what we do to complete the waterproofing of your basement.

Troy Hill: Once again Jason it's a pleasure being a part of this show as a homeowner. I'm happy to be able to ask you questions about different types of things that I should be looking for, different types of things I should be concerned about as a homeowner, and ladies and gentlemen if you are a homeowner or if you're thinking about buying a home I really think you should pay close attention to this show because we're telling you things that you should actually be concerned about and be looking for so that if you're buying a home you could say "You know I heard that radio show, I don't know, we should be concerned about mold being around the windows. Let's look down at the basement, let's see if there's moisture down in the basement" and if it is you should say "You know what? We need to either renegotiate the price here or we need to look somewhere else." I also want to touch on the fact that when you guys come out and do a job, I know Bill calls him Chuck in the truck, I always call him Sam driving a Chevy van, you've got to be careful with that guy too. But you talk about this 25-year warranty. Ladies and gentlemen we repeat that - 25-year warranty. So that mean if I have you come do something to my basement and you seal it all up I have a 25-year warranty. If I'm thinking about selling that house I'm going to put that up on the table so when they come by and look they know that even though I've sold the house they still have a 25-year warranty on that basement. Let's touch on that just a bit.

Jason Harmon: True, Troy, the warranty that we give is a transferrable warranty. So if you've had your house for 10 years and sell it your new owner's going to have 15 years left on that warranty. That is a big, big selling feature for someone buying a home.

Troy Hill: So you have it but let's talk about - I know we touched on this during the last show - but let's talk about how to control the water coming into the basement. How do we do that? How do you do that? Because I'm just going to sit back and watch you do it so let's talk about that.

Jason Harmon: We're going to capture that water that might be coming into the basement is what we're going to do. And we do that by cutting the basement floor down to the top of the footing, installing a product called water guard which is a molded plastic product designed to catch water coming through the wall or up under the floor and the water guard goes around the perimeter of your basement and is tied into a sump pump system which the in turn pumps the water out of the basement. And once we install this water guard we concrete back over top of it so once we're done you don't even know it's there.

Troy Hill: The other thing that I wanted to touch on and we talked about the sump pump, the pipe is pushed away from the house so we don't have to worry about the water coming back in. As a homeowner if I say "Hey I want it 15 inches away from the house" you can do that.

Jason Harmon: Not 15 inches, we want it a minimum of 10 feet away.

Troy Hill: Yes, if I'm doing it it's going to be 10 inches but if you guys do it it's 10 feet away from the house.

Jason Harmon: We can take that almost any distance away from the house. The only thing we can't do is run it in your neighbor's yard.

Troy Hill: I saw in advertising that you guys had several different sump pumps that are available. Can I go to my local big box store and get a sump pump and say "Hey, it got one"? What's the difference?

Jason Harmon: Our sump pumps are a very, very high quality pump. They have cast iron housing and a steel impeller. Now the reason for that is the cast iron housing actually conducts the heat of the motor away from the pump to keep it cool and the impeller is steel rather than plastic so that particles of sand and grit do not eat it up. We can configure these pumps in a number of different ways. Usually a one-third horsepower pump is sufficient but if we're dealing with a large volume of water we might place a one-third horsepower pump and a one-half horse power pump in the same sub-unit. Now these are actually installed in the sub -unit at different levels so that the one-third horsepower pump kicks on first and if that volume of water coming in there is too great for it to handle the second pump, the one-half horsepower will automatically kick in. And another option is to add a battery backup that will automatically kick in should there be a loss of electric. Now the battery backup pump is capable of pumping up to 11,000 gallons of water on one battery charge. Now the battery looks similar to a car battery but its designed especially to run these sump pumps. And the battery is connected to your electrical system so that the battery is kept permanently charged. There's also an alarm on here that should the electric go off or a circuit breaker popped it will warn you that there is an issue; an audible sound will tell you that there's an issue with that so that you can address it right away. Now let's go back to the sump container that we use for a little bit. We use a one-piece molded unit with a sealed lid which prevents the evaporation of water from the sump into the basement. Now don't forget this is what we're trying to do is eliminate all that moisture in your basement. The sump container itself is set in a bed of gravel and is perforated with holes around it which allows water from underneath the floor to get into it. Now remember earlier we told you about our high groundwater table here. So if water comes up underneath your floor it can traverse to this sump and enter the sump underneath the floor, actually before getting into our water management system. Now there's also a surface drain in the lid of the sump container which allows water to enter in it. For instance if you have a plumbing leak and you're not aware of it, you've got water on your floor, it's going to find its way to the sump and it's going to be able to enter the sump container through this surface drain. Now remember I told you that this is a sealed lid. The surface drain actually has a ball in it that looks something like a Ping-Pong ball so when there's no water in the surface drain the ball drops down and seals the opening; when water gets into the surface drain it cases that ball to float and allows the water to go on down into the sump. So our containers are very state-of-the-art and we have a couple of different sized ones. One is designed for one to two pumps and we have another one that's a little bit larger and it's sort of an egg shape which is designed to hold up to three pumps. Now let me tell you about a little problem I ran into one time. We were called by a gentleman to come take a look at his basement. He had actually sump pumps in his basement but he came from work one day and he had several inches of water on his floor. Well what had happened, the circuit breaker had popped, both of his sump pumps were plugged into the same circuit breaker so when the circuit breaker popped both pumps went out. We always recommend that you have a dedicated line for each of your sump pumps so that this situation won't happen. The other thing would have been if he had had that electric backup pump he wouldn't have had a problem because it would have kicked in and taken the water out. Another issue we found in his particular case was that whoever installed his pumps only installed one inch and a half discharge line to the outside. Now remember each one of these pumps has a one and a half inch line so actually his discharge flow was being constricted. We install a one and a half inch discharge line for each of the electric pumps.

Troy Hill: If we had had the battery pack backup-would that have helped too?

Jason Harmon: The battery would have prevented his basement from being flooded because the battery backup pump would have automatically kicked in when the water rose to a certain point in the sump and his electric pumps didn't kick on because the circuit breaker had popped but the battery backup would automatically kick in at that point and pump the water to the outside. Remember I said this battery backup pump that we sell will pump up to 11,000 gallons of water on one battery charge.

Troy Hill: You know what I like about doing this show is that you're a mind reader too because I was going to ask the question why would I need a battery backup because usually the power don't go out and only in the winter for like a couple of hours and probably only in the summer for about a couple of hours but you just answered my question. There are things called emergencies and things that happen like circuit breakers that I don't even take into consideration. In the event that that happens, bam, this battery back kicks right in.

Jason Harmon: Kicks in and protects your home and for a few hundred dollars you can save yourself thousands of dollars.

Troy Hill: Do you often find yourself going to homes that people have called you or emailed you and say "Hey Jason" of "Hey Bill come over and take a look at this because this is - I have a problem with this" and you look and you go "Boy, what was the guy thinking that did this?"

Jason Harmon: Troy, we see some really unusual things that have been done in basements to try and solve an issue of water. Years ago there wasn't the technology that there is today to handle these types of situations. The technology for keeping a basement dry really didn't start coming into effect until the late 1990's and this is when actually the company that we purchase from, the owner of this company actually developed this system -- this is a young guy -he actually personally holds 29 different patents. I really enjoy talking and hearing this gentleman talk because he's one of those people that when you see him or you talk to him you know his brain's going 90 miles an hour thinking about other things too -- very, very knowledgeable and a very personable gentleman also. But he started out in Connecticut where they have a lot of water issues up there with basements and he has developed these products that he has now developed actually an international web of dealers that do the installation of these products. Throughout the United States and the world actually there are around 600 dealers that do this and we all tie together and we help each other out when necessary. There's a convention every year where the dealers get together and this is a great thing because talking to other dealers you find out the problems they have experienced that might be different than your problems and how they have solved them. So it might be just a situation where someday you will have this same problem and you already knew the answer to it. Troy Hill: Am I correct or correct me if I'm wrong - that basements are usually damp. I mean I go down to the basement I know it's going to be damp; even though they may not have a water issue it's still going to be damp in a basement because it's a basement. Jason Harmon: It's a basement. A basement's similar to a crawl space and the temperature of a basement is cooler than the outside air during the spring, summer, and fall months. Now when this outside air enters the basement either through open windows or doors or just cracks condensation is created causing dampness. And if you ever listened to one of our other shows concerning crawl spaces we talked a lot about the floor joists absorbing moisture from the water vapor in your basement. This same condition can actually happen in a basement too. So the big thing that we're going to talk about in a little while is being able to control that humidity in the basement. Even though we have addressed your water issue problems there is still the humidity problem that we need to address.

Troy Hill: And what do you recommend to overcome this situation? Jason Harmon: Well the solution to controlling the humidity in a basement is very simple - DryZone sells and installs quality dehumidifiers that will remove up to 100 pints of water per day from the air. Now the dehumidifiers have filters that will remove dust and allergens down to two microns in size. The great thing is that they never have to be emptied. We can drain the dehumidifiers into an existing sump pump or we can install a condensate pump and discharge the water directly to the outside. Another nice feature is that the dehumidifiers can be placed in an unfinished area of the basement and ducted into a finished area. And please, please, please don't compare DryZone's dehumidifiers with those that you buy in the big box store. Quality wise there is absolutely no comparison. It all boils down to the old saying "You get what you pay for."

Troy Hill: We've got to take a break and when we come back we're going to still focus on basements. You're listening to Under Your Hoe with DryZone and you can find them on the worldwide web at www.dryzone.com, www.dryzone.com. Let's give out some email addresses.

Jason Harmon: Okay Troy. We're easy to get in touch with. You can reach me at Jason@dryzone.com or you can reach Bill Anderson, the co-owner of the company, at bill@dryzone.com. Feel free, email us at any time.

Troy Hill: Okay, we'll be back with more of Under Your Home with DryZone right after this.

Jason Harmon: Welcome back to Under Your Home with DryZone. This is Jason Harmon and my guest today is Troy and we are talking about basements, water issues in basements, moisture issues in basements, and how to correct all of these things to give you an area of your home that is going to be usable to you and not just one of those places that is dark and damp that you never go down into.

Troy Hill: Now Jason you've been in the real estate business for quite some time before you went to work for DryZone. How important is a basement when you're selling a home? How important is a basement that is dry, it has that dehumidifier that is getting all of the moisture out? How important is that when you're showing off a home to say "and look at this basement?”

Jason Harmon: Troy a basement can either make or break a sale. A buyer looking at properties is going to expect a dry basement. They don't want to buy a house that has a wet or damp basement and have to go in and spend a lot of dollars on this property because number one, they're not going to have a lot of dollars to spend because most people buying a home or sinking most of their available cash into the down payment and the closing costs so there's very, very little discretionary funds to be able to use for something like fixing a water issue in a basement. The other thing that people are looking at with a dry basement is being able to finish that basement off at some point in time. The family expands or maybe mom and dad comes back to live with the family as they get up in years, maybe they want a family room which they don't have on the main level of the house - there are any number of reasons. And with a dry basement they could do this with no problem. Now I mentioned something here about finishing basements but I want to do a little bit of a qualifier here and this is a little bit of an educational thing because a lot of people don't realize this. When you finish a basement you have to have an egress. An egress is access directly to the outside. In addition to the stairway going upstairs you have to have this egress to the outside. This is by code. In a future show we're going to talk more about this but this is something DryZone can do also. One of the things about a basement is it gives you a lot of usable square footage if it's dry and this square footage is going to be a lot cheaper than adding on an addition to the main level of your house. Family room, bedroom, another bathroom, finished laundry room, a game room - the options are really unlimited as to what you can do with a basement.

Troy Hill: You said by code. What does that mean?

Jason Harmon: Your counties have building codes and you have to do any construction according to the building codes and if you don't they can come back in and make you do it and you don't want that to happen.

Troy Hill: But you guys know that going in, you know all these codes. Like I said we talked about this earlier in the show when you got Chuck in a truck that comes by and he doesn't know all the codes. And it's no disrespect to Chuck in a truck but he just does not keep up with all the codes. He's there today and he's gone. You guys are studying this, you've got seminars that you're going to constantly, and you're keeping up with all of the codes.

Jason Harmon: This is true, Troy. You mentioned seminars. Our company is big on education. And when I say big on education I mean our people go to seminars and training courses on a regular basis and they're not just all local, we travel all the way to the factory which is up in Seymour, Connecticut and these courses last for several days at a time and the company pays the employees' expenses to go to these training seminars. The other thing that we do that I don't know really any other company that does is offer training and education to the general public. We feel that an informed buyer is going to be a buyer who is going to be able to make a wise decision and make his dollars go the farthest for him. Now we will put on seminars for organizations, real estate agents. Let's take for instance the Lion's Club. You won't even go into a club like that and put on a program. And we have designed programs of different lengths for different situations and basically they all touch on the same subjects but some just go into more detailed than others. We can do a 15-minute one, we can do a three-hour one and they're all prepared and ready to go, all you have to do is give us a call.

Troy Hill: So let's say there is the Lions' club because we have a Lion's Club around here, we have the Rotary Club around here, and we have different types of Chambers of Commerce around within the listing area and let’s say they say "You know what? I heard the show that you guys talked about basements. I thought it was really good especially coming from homeowner's point of view and different types of things like that" but we only have an hour. "We've got a lunch and we need a guest speaker for an hour to talk about just focus basements." Can you do that?

Jason Harmon: Troy we sure can. Since we have people in an audience that are diverse - in other words by that I mean we have some that have homes with basements, some with crawl spaces, we have people that might have issues with foundations. We actually like to touch on all of these different subjects when we put on a program. As I said earlier we can do this in a matter of 15 minutes but there it's sold of ballpoints, a half an hour, an hour, or if they really wanted to get into detail we can do it three hours.

Troy Hill: Let's give out an email address if someone wanted to contact you and said "Hey, we want you to speak."

Jason Harmon: Okay Troy, they can reach me at Jason@dryzone.com or they could reach the co-owner Bill Anderson at bill@dryzone.com.

Troy Hill: Do you know what Jason, before we wrap things up, I want to talk about I've seen some basements where you go inside of a basement and I've seen them where they had water issues and there are stains on the wall. Can't somebody just paint over that and just brighten it up a little bit and go home?

Jason Harmon: Troy, DryZone does not recommend painting the walls for several reasons. First of all, Troy, if you're painting in to stop the moisture you're really wasting your money because eventually that paint's going to flake off and you're going to have the same problem all over again. If you're painting to cover up stains you'd have to apply a stain killer first since water stains will bleed through almost all paints. But most paints today are latex paints and latex comes from a tree and therefore it's organic in nature. What you're doing when you paint a wall with a latex paint is you're creating a surface that becomes a potential place for mold to grow. Now remember mold is three things - a mold spore and they're everywhere, moisture and an organics surface. Now DryZone does have a selection of products designed to dress up these stained walls for a minimum of cost. DryZone also has a line of wall paneling, ceiling tiles, floor tiles made out of inorganic materials and designed especially for basements. But this is a topic for another show, Troy.

Troy Hill: You've got it. But I think that's a really good point and I want you to do that one more time. Mold needs three things.

Jason Harmon: Correct Troy, mold needs an organic surface, an organic surface being something that has been alive at one point in time. Latex paint came from a tree; wood is a tree, leather - a lot of people don't realize - leather.

Troy Hill: Yes that's true.

Jason Harmon: It needs a mold spore and they're here and it needs moisture. And if we can control that moisture we can control the potential for mold to grow in your basement.

And we talked earlier about installing a dehumidifier and this is one of the things that that dehumidifier is going to do, is going to control the level of the moisture to prevent the possibility or mold growing.

Troy Hill: This is why it's so great to be sitting in with you to ask questions as a homeowner. First of all you're honest about your answers and you're saying this is what you need, this is what you need, but to be honest when you go and look at someone's basement you can't just pick up the phone and you can say "I'll tell you what. I hear what our concerns are, give me your address, let's set up a time and le me come and let me take a look at it" because it's important to take a look at the basement.

Jason Harmon: Definitely Troy, we will not quote you anything over the telephone. No two basements are alike really. They might have separate issues, you might need a full perimeter drain, you might need only a partial perimeter drain. We inspect your basement, we determine what your issues are and we design a system specifically for your basement.

Troy Hill: You've got it. Now can I pay you a little bit down to get started and then kind of pay you a little bit down the road? Do you have something like finance that's available that I can talk to you about?

Jason Harmon: Troy we sure have. We have available programs where you can make payments for this work. The programs actually run through a bank and we have same as cash programs or we have regular financing programs so we can handle the whole thing for you. We don't need to bring in outside people, as I said the bank actually dose the financing, we give you all the information you need. Actually it's done over the telephone, all you need is call the bank, give then figures and some other information, and bam, it can be approved right over the phone.

Troy Hill: You can do it. And you know what Jason? As always Bill take another week off okay because it's a pleasure sitting in and being able to ask you different types of questions about things as a homeowner that I should be concerned about because purchasing a house, the thing about it is you're constantly putting money into that house constantly and anything that you can eliminate for putting extra money in where you don't have to spend it, it's a wonderful thing so thanks for answering a lot of the questions that I have and I'm sure people over the Delmarva Peninsula also have.

Jason Harmon: Thanks Troy. It's been a pleasure being here today.

Troy Hill: Let's give out a website address and of course if someone wants to get in touch with either you or the owner Bill what should they do?

Jason Harmon: You can email me at Jason@dryzone.com or Bill Anderson at bill@dryzone.com or check us out on the worldwide web www.DryZone.com

Troy Hill: As always it's a pleasure. I look forward to hopefully being with you next week to talk more about Under Your Home with DryZone. Thank you, Jason.

Foundation Support and Repair: Permanent solutions for common Foundation Issues

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:33:22 -0400

Jason Harmon: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. This is Jason bringing you Under Your Home with DryZone. This morning I have a guest with me again, Troy. Troy; glad to have you with us.

Troy Hill: Glad to be here.

Jason Harmon: And before I forget let me give you a little bit of contact information on how you can get in touch with DryZone and I'll repeat this again later on in the program. You call us or check us out on the web at www.dryzone.com or you can always email me at Jason@dryzone.com or the co-owner Bill Anderson at bill@dryzone.com.

Jason Harmon: Troy on previous shows we've discussed crawl spaces and their issues and solutions and basements with their issues and solutions but today I want to talk about another product line that DryZone specializes in. That would be foundation support and repair. Over the years technology has improved the ability to address the issues of failing foundations in a permanent way. There are a lot of homeowners that have a problem but they don't really know they have a problem and today I'm going to talk about things to look for that could indicate a problem, what might cause that problem, and the solution to fixing the problem.

Troy Hill: Hopefully you're going to separate these problems between a house with crawl space or a house with a basement.

Jason Harmon: Yes Troy to some extent. Both types of houses can have similar problems but there are specific issues found in each. Let's start by talking about a house with a crawl space that has a problem with floor sagging. This can be caused by a number of things. Number one the existing block or brick columns that are supporting the girder may be spaced too far apart, the columns are supporting the girder and if they're spaced too far apart this is going to create a problem. The girder actually supports the floor joist and the floor joist supports the entire weight of the house. If the girder is spaced too far apart the girder could become overloaded and sag between the columns and when the girder sags so does the floor above it. Another cause might be weakened floor joists and girders due to moisture and wood rot. If you have happened to be listening to one of our shows about excess moisture in crawl spaces we talked about how the excess moisture causes the wood to begin to rot and become weak and unable to continue supporting the weight of the house. A third item and probably the most common is the existing column settling due to weak or unstable soil. Now this often creates a gap between the top of the column and the bottom of the girder that the girders supposed to be supporting. Now once the column settles then the girder sags and the floors above sag and this is a chain reaction.

Troy Hill: I wasn't aware that there could be all these types of problems but here comes the big $550,000 question. Are you ready for it?

Jason Harmon: I'm ready.

Troy Hill: Can DryZone correct these problems?

Jason Harmon: Yes Troy DryZone has the products and the knowledge to address these issues. Let's start by describing just what we do when we come to your house. First the inspector wants to spend a few minutes with the owner to tell them a little bit about DryZone but more importantly to find out what the owner has been experiencing that made him contact us. Then the inspector is going to go into the crawl space and do a complete inspection and take a lot of pictures. Then he will go back up in the house, meet with the owner, download the pictures on to his computer, and show the owner exactly what he has observed. Then he will discuss the solution with the owner and quote him the price right there on the spot.

Troy Hill: And then I assume you're going to put in some shims and additional concrete piers. What's going to happen?

Jason Harmon: Definitely not Troy. Why use something that has already failed? Shimming is cheap and easy but it's only a temporary fix because the piers are going to continue to move and piers made from concrete blocks are time-consuming to install because of the waiting time for the concrete and mortar to cure.

Troy Hill: Now you have my curiosity. Exactly how is DryZone going to address these issues?

Jason Harmon: We do need a minimum amount of space to work in, Troy. If the crawl space is the height of let's say two or three blocks we're good to go. Let's take the problem with the piers, whether it be that they're too far apart or settling into the ground. We're going to use a product called a SmartJack. Now please don't compare our SmartJack with a light duty jack boost that you can buy in a hardware store. Our SmartJack is engineered and tested to support up to 60,000 pounds of weight. Now let me explain briefly how it's installed. A two-foot cube of soil is excavated for each SmartJack location. The hole is then filled with engineered fill, that's gravel, and tightly compacted and then a pre-cast concrete base is set into place. Then the next step is to add a high strength galvanized steel column. These columns come in long lengths and we cut them to the appropriate height of each installation. The steel column and components are assembled and connected to the girder then the SmartJack system is tightened into place. The girder and the floor joists are immediately stabilized and lifting the above floors back to level can be attempted.

Troy Hill: It doesn't seem like gravel could support much weight as like concrete. Is this going to be okay?

Jason Harmon: Remember I said that the galvanized steel column is placed on a pre-cast concrete base and set on a cube of gravel. Now this is the key - the whole system has been engineered for maximum support and the engineering term that describes this is called bulb of significant stress influence. The manufacturer of the SmartJack system has both geotechnical and structural engineers on staff full time that deal with this issue and design these products.

Troy Hill: If my existing joist and girders are weak, Jason can a SmartJack still be used?

Jason Harmon: Yes, Troy. Either new joists or girders can be installed or new lumber can be sintered to each side of the joist or girder. Now sintering is the practice of growing new lumber alongside structurally compromised girders or floor joists.

Troy Hill: Okay now while I'm thinking of it on past radio shows when you were talking about other products that DryZone sells and installs for crawl spaces and basements you mentioned training. Are your people professionally trained on foundation support products too?

Jason Harmon: Most definitely. DryZone sends not only their sales people but also their installers to the manufacturer's facility in Omaha, Nebraska for product and installation training. This is a state of the art facility for administration, training, warehousing, and distribution of their products.

Troy Hill: If you just tuned in you're listening to Under Your Home with DryZone. I'm Troy Hill; Jason Harmon is with us this morning. I've got the questions and Jason has the answer, But Jason let's talk about an email address because anything that we're talking about, I mean the last couple of weeks we've been talking about crawl spaces, we've been talking about basements, today we're talking about foundation support, anything that we're talking about here on the radio that someone may have a question to you guys will answer that.

Jason Harmon: Yes, Troy, we're happy to be able to talk with people about their particular issues. We're easy to get a hold of. They can email us Jason@dryzone.com or one of the co-owners, Bill Anderson, at bill@dryzone.com or they want to talk to us personally they can get us on the telephone.Troy Hill: You talked about the piers that support the girder sinking into the ground because of unstable soil. Can this same thing happen to a foundation?

Jason Harmon: Yes, the perimeter foundation unfortunately can also be affected in this way too. However, we do have the technology to address this issue also.

Troy Hill: Now what indication would there be that there might be a problem? Is there anything we should be looking for?

Jason Harmon: Yes, Troy, some of the indicators might be unleveled floors, sticking windows and doors, doors and windows that are out of square, cracks in the interior walls especially at the corners of doors and windows, stair stepping cracks on the bricks outside on the house if it happens to be a brick house, a chimney that might be separating from the rest of the house and sort of leaning away from it, and cracks in the foundation.

Troy Hill: These are all indications that there may be a problem. Now as a homeowner - and this is what I like about this - as a homeowner we should be looking at these types of things monthly, sometimes daily, to make sure that we don't have sticking windows and things like that or here's a good one, a chimney that's separating from the rest of the house may be a good indication that there may be foundation problems.

Jason Harmon: This is true, Troy.

Troy Hill: And if we're out buying a house these are also things that we should be looking out when we're out buying a house to take a look at these types of things too.

Jason Harmon: Yes you as a buyer should be looking for these things and also when you have your home inspection you want to be sure that your home inspector is keeping an eye for these things also.

Troy Hill: You've got it. Now once you have determined that there is a foundation problem or a foundation issue what are the different methods that can be used to correct some of these problems?

Jason Harmon: Well Troy first of all we will thoroughly inspect the house to determine where the issue might be. It could be just one corner or one end of the house. From the inspection we will determine how to approach the solution. Most likely we will use either a push pier or a helical pier. Now both of these products are similar; the big difference is that one is pushed into the ground and the other is screwed into the ground. For this installation I will use the helical pier.

Troy Hill: Okay, now before we get to the helical pier and what it is I want to go back just a bit when we say the word foundation because when we say foundation to me I think of the group, Foundation Build Me Up Buttercup - anyway that's a joke. Thanks for laughing, buddy. What exactly is the foundation?

Jason Harmon: Those things, Troy, are the indications of a failing foundation. The foundation consists of first of all your footer. The footer is a poured concrete slab that's below ground and it is usually twice as wide as the blocks that are going to be put on it. And then on top of the footer are placed your concrete blocks which create the wall to support the house. So the footing and the block wall are both parts of the foundation.

Troy Hill: So these are things that are saying there's a problem in that foundation part that needs to be corrected. Then we get to this thing called helical piers. What are they?

Jason Harmon: The helical pier that DryZone uses for foundation issues is a heavy gauge round steel pipe. The first section has one or more round steel plates called helix plates that are welded to it and are cut at an angle on the edge to allow them to be screwed into the ground. The plates can vary in diameter from six inches to 14 inches depending on what the soils conditions will require. And then additional sections are bolded to the first section by specially designed coupling as they're screwed into the ground. Troy Hill: Now I have this image of what a foundation is, now I have this image of what you're going to do, I have an image. Now I want to talk about the magic that you guys are going to perform.

Jason Harmon: Now there's really no magic involved, just good old American engineering and ingenuity. The first step is going to be to excavate down to the bottom of the footing. Then we remove a short section of the footing that protrudes past the blocks. Now this will allow us to place a very heavy bracket that is on top of the first helical section under the footing and against the block wall. Then we bring in a mini-excavator which has a hydraulic drive head and we proceed to start turning the helical pier into the ground. As we turn it into the ground additional sections are added until the required depth is achieved. This process is repeated on additional helical piles and piers until the required number are in place. Then we place a hydraulic jack on top of each and connect these to a master control panel. Hydraulic pressure is applied until the necessary lift has been achieved and once this lift has been achieved then the bracket is locked in place and the hydraulic jack is removed. Actually what we're doing is transferring the weight of the house from the unstable soil to the helical piers which are embedded in stable soil. This is a permanent fix and once the excavated area has been backfilled you don't even know the piers are there.

Troy Hill: So basically when you're talking about this you are referring to like lifting or raising the house?

Jason Harmon: Yes, the process is done very slowly actually and each jack can be operated individually as well as in unison with the other jacks. The goal is to bring the house back to a level position and stabilize it and it's amazing the results that we can achieve.

Troy Hill: We're talking about foundations. And what causes a foundation to fail?

Jason Harmon: In a lot of cases, Troy, the foundation fails because of unstable soil. The foundation can also be affected by a high water table. On the Delmarva Peninsula we have an extremely high water table and if the foundation has not been installed to a proper depth on undisturbed soil then when the water table comes up it's going to create a weakened condition for the soil underneath the foundation and the foundation is going to start to actually settle into the ground.

Troy Hill: How long does it take for a foundation to weaken?

Jason Harmon: Troy that's almost impossible to give a time line on that. It can be almost immediately after construction if the foundation was not properly installed but in most cases most contractors are very good about meeting the regulations of the building codes when they install a foundation for a house. But over a time period with the freezing and thawing of your ground and with the wet and dry of the ground it can cause the foundation to start to settle. It is usually a process that starts out slowly but unless it's detected and fixed it can become a real expensive issue for your home.

Troy Hill: I can remember growing up as a child and you're sitting there watching TV and you hear this clank, clank, clank and my parents would say "Oh it's just the house settling, don't worry about it." I don't know whether that was a joke or if you heat that noise - the crack, crack, and crack - it's the house settling but you've got to do something about it.

Jason Harmon: Well actually the crack, crack, crack can be caused by a lot of things. It could be a settling issue to an extent, also houses expand and contract and with heat and cooling you can also hear some cracking in a house. In fact some of your newer houses that have aluminum or vinyl siding on it when the sun hits that siding you can actually hear a cracking in the late afternoon when the sound goes down and things start to cool off you hear it crack again.

Troy Hill: But that's nothing we should be worried about?

Jason Harmon: Not really.

Troy Hill: Not really, it's just expanding and doing its thing, what it's supposed to do?

Jason Harmon: Correct.

Troy Hill: Okay, so we're on this thing called foundation. Now we realize that one of the things that tells us that our foundation is going bad is we try to life up the windows on a nice fall day and we realize that it's tough to lift these windows up because they're sticking. The doors and the windows aren't square anymore. The stair steps every time we go up they're cracking. And you look at our chimney and the attic and it looks like it's moving to the left a little bit. So now we know that there's a foundation problem we call you guys, and you guys are the solution. You come in, you take a look, and you get the foundation back to where it is. Now let's go on the SmartJack. What exactly is the SmartJack all about that's going to help us or going to help you guys get my foundation back to normal?

Jason Harmon: Number one Troy the SmartJack is adjustable whereas a standard girder which is made out of concrete blocks to support a girder is not adjustable. And once a concrete block pier actually sinks into the ground some people will come in and put shims in to try and take up that space just between the girder and the block but this is only a temporary fix because the pier is going to continue to settle into the ground. But our SmartJack being adjustable when we put it in we can tighten that up and actually stabilize your girder which in turn is going to stabilize your floor joist. Now the SmartJack is not a lightweight thing. The SmartJack is a very heavy duty product. The column of the SmartJack is of galvanized steel and the adjustable part of it are very heavy units and these are designed especially for this purpose of supporting the girder of a house and they're designed so that each one of them can support up to 60,000 pounds of weight.

Troy Hill: Wow, that's a lot of weight.

Jason Harmon: That's a bunch.

Troy Hill: Now I know I asked this question earlier in the show but I'm going to do it again just to make sure I'm on the right page. You're actually lifting; you're raising the house to get everything together, right?

Jason Harmon: Troy, we cannot guarantee lift with a SmartJack but we guarantee stabilization. However, in most cases we can achieve lift. Now to give you an example we recently did a house that had a crawl space and the floor on one end of the house had settled. When the lady called us about having a problem when we went out and looked we found that the floor underneath the wall that separated the master bedroom from the adjoining bedroom had actually dropped away three inches.

Troy Hill: Yikes.

Jason Harmon: Yikes is right. And this was an issue where the pier had settled, actually several piers on that end of the house had settled and we were able to go in with our SmartJack system not only stabilized the house but bring it up to almost exactly where it was originally was when it was built.

Troy Hill: Now she's got to be happy about that.

Jason Harmon: She was ecstatic.

Troy Hill: I'm impressed. Now you said earlier that houses with basements can experience the same situations. These helical piers can be used to fix them also, is that correct?

Jason Harmon: Well Troy when we're talking about a house with a basement we're talking about a little bit of a different situation here but yes, they can be, and yes and no is not a good answer but let me elaborate a little bit on that. We have another product called a push pier; this is in addition to the helical pier. The ultimate results are the same but the product itself is a little different and the installation is somewhat different. Unlike the helical pier they're a heavy gauge steel pipe but they do not have the helix plates welded to them and instead of being screwed into the ground they're hydraulically pushed into the ground. Now they have a heavy duty bracket just like the helical pier and we can obtain lift with them also. Big advantage to the push pier is that we do not have to use a large piece of equipment to install them. We can install them from within the basement by cutting a hole in the basement floor down to the top of the footing and then cementing over it when we're finished. Now since the footing of a basement is usually six to eight feet below the grade level the push pier eliminates the need to excavate deep holes around the house. It also eliminates the need to disturb shrubbery and sidewalks, porches, decks, patios, air conditioning units, and anything else that's been added around the house.

Troy Hill: Why not just jack the house up and put a new foundation under it? Can we do that?

Jason Harmon: Not a good solution, Troy. If you're going to do those plan of moving out?

Troy Hill: I was going to say you could see why DryZone does not hire me to do any of the fixing.

Jason Harmon: If you're going to put a whole new foundation under a house you're going to probably have to move out for a couple of months because all your water lines and your sewer lines and your heat ducts are going to have to be disconnected and the house is going to have to be jacked up and it's going to be a lot more costly and you really want to put a new foundation on soil that's already proven to be unstable?

Troy Hill: This is true. Are there any other foundation problems that homeowners should look out for?

Jason Harmon: Yes, there are others but because of time I'll briefly talk about one that's fairly common. It's a bowing basement wall. Bowing basement walls are caused by a number of reasons - settling of poorly compacted backfilled soil, alternating wet and dry soils, alternating freezing and thawing - are among the most common causes. This condition occurs on both block walls and poured concrete walls. We have several products to address the bowing wall issue but I think the best one is what's called a Geo-Lock Anchor System. Now this is the least intrusive, installs quickly, and not only stabilizes the wall but gives the ability to straighten the wall.

Troy Hill: And that's a good thing.

Jason Harmon: That's a great thing.

Troy Hill: That's a good thing, that way we don't have to build a new foundation, we don't have to move out of our houses, we're in there while DryZone can do the work. That's the thing about it, while we're in the house living in the house and you're outside or under the house doing all that can I still continue on cooking and making dinner for the family while you guys are doing the work on the outside?

Jason Harmon: Just pretend we're not there, you can do everything you normally do. The main thing is when we start to lift the house, when we've used helical piers or push piers we want you there because we want you inside the house to observe these cracks in the walls and the different issues, the spaces where the floor has settled, and when we start to do the lift we're going to let you tell us when you're satisfied with what we've got.

Troy Hill: Okay, got you. So I'm in there saying "A little bit more. All right, now there you go, I'm happy right there."

Jason Harmon: That's correct.

Troy Hill: When the lady called did she realize what was going on with her foundation or she just said "You know, it doesn't look level in this room"?

Jason Harmon: She had no idea as to what the cause was. The only problem she had was the fact that her floor had settled.

Troy Hill: And she knew that the floor had settled?

Jason Harmon: Yes, not only did the floor settle on that particular end of the house which was the bedroom end but we showed her also where down in the kitchen she had had some issues too where the ceramic tile floor in the kitchen had dropped away from the wall a little bit. We were able to stabilize that also and bring it back up in place.

Troy Hill: So you guys are like inspectors.

Jason Harmon: That's our job, we inspect your house to find out what's wrong with it.

Troy Hill: Because I heard you say when you go and look at a crawl space you take a lot of pictures and you bring those pictures back and you say "Here's where the problem is." You know that and you see that.

Jason Harmon: This is correct, Troy, most homeowners especially with crawl spaces don't want to go underneath the crawl space or they're unable to get under there for one reason or another.

Troy Hill: I don't want to go under.

Jason Harmon: So we take a lot of pictures because we want them to visually see what the problem is. Now if it's a house with a basement usually they're staying right beside us while we're doing the inspection. And this is a good thing because we can show them on the spot as well as taking the picture exactly what the issue is.

Troy Hill: And see this is the part that I like, that you're actually under there, you're taking the pictures and you're seeing what the problem is. And so ladies and gentlemen listen very carefully to this, if someone calls you up and you're telling them what you're experiencing and they're quoting you a price that's a problem.

Jason Harmon: That's a problem, Troy, because you cannot determine exactly what the problem is without physically seeing it and you cannot quote a solution to that problem unless you have actually seen the cause of the problem.

Troy Hill: And this is the reason why DryZone wants to take pictures, bring them in, and show them to you because - and I'm going to touch on this because I want you do touch on it actually Jason - because they are trained to look for these types of things and they are trained to take pictures and show them to you and say "Here's the problem." They already know the solution, it's up to you to determine what you want done because you guys are trained, you're in school just about once a month, twice a month - tell me how many times a month are you in school?

Jason Harmon: Well actually Troy was having training classes within the company itself every week. There's an hour spent every week just on training in the company and periodically, usually a couple of times a year depending on the situation, they go to the manufacturer's facility for additional training. Occasionally there are new products that come on to the market by the manufacturer and of course when this happens and we need to go get our training on these products because number one the sales people need to know what they're selling, number two the installers need to know how to properly install that product.

Troy Hill: You've got it. So it's constantly education, education, education. The other thing I like is you like to pass some of that education that you've learned to different types of non-profit organizations or Chamber of Commerce that wants to do a luncheon to talk about different types of foundation, basements, and things like that. You're available to talk about that?

Jason Harmon: Yes we are, Troy. We think that education is a very important thing for the consumer and we have developed programs of different lengths that we can put on for non-profit organizations or whoever actually, even a group of homeowners who might want to get together, we'll do it. And there's no charge for doing this, this is part of what we do to educate the public on the potential - and I want to emphasize that word - on the potential problems that they might incur on their home.

Troy Hill: And let's give out an email addresses where people can get contact with you.

Jason Harmon: Check us out on the worldwide web at www.dryzone.com or email us. You can reach me Jason@dryzone.com or one of the owners, Bill Anderson, at bill@dryzone.com. Troy Hill: Anything we talked about on the radio you guys will answer those questions. Can they just email you a question and you'll get back with them?

Jason Harmon: Yes, of course on an email we're limited as to what we're going to be able to describe. If we can talk personally to them it's a back and forth thing and probably is a little better and easier to describe a situation to them over the telephone. Best thing to do is to let us make an appointment if you think you have a problem and come out to your house and check it out and discuss it with you face to face.

Troy Hill: Is there a charge if I think I have a problem and you come out and take a look?

Jason Harmon: No, Troy, absolutely no cost for an inspection and an estimate if you think you has a problem.

Troy Hill: Visit them online at www.dryzone.conm and once again here are the email addresses; Jason Harmon: Jason@dryzone.com and that's J-A-S-O-N, or Bill Anderson at bill@dryzone.com.

Troy Hill: Jason, as always, it's a pleasure talking with you about Under Your Home with DryZone and I look forward to chatting with you next week.

Jason Harmon: Good Troy, see you next week.

Addressing Common Issues in Crawl Spaces (Part 2)

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:23:13 -0400

Jason Harmon: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. This is Jason with DryZone and we're here today with the program that we call Under Your Home with DryZone. Usually we have Bill Anderson, one of the co-owners of the company with us but he's not able to be here today so Troy is going to be our guest and he's going to ask some questions that he has concerning crawl spaces. At our last show we run out of time when we were talking about crawl spaces so we're going to continue today with some more questions and hopefully we'll be able to answer some more of your questions and don't forget you can contact us any time at Jason@dryzone.com or you can get a hold of Bill at bill@dryzone.com or check us out on the worldwide web at www.dryzone.com.

Troy Hill: It's a pleasure being able to sit in here and ask some of the questions that as a homeowner I have a lot of concerns like last week when we were talking on the radio and we talked about crawl space and whether we should keep it open in the winter or closed in the summer or do we leave it - I mean these are just typical things that me as a homeowner really just want to know on a daily basis. So let's talk about rotten wood in my crawl space. Can you elaborate on that?

Jason Harmon: Troy I would be happy to elaborate that. This is another really big reason to control the humidity in your crawl space. Extreme moisture in a crawl space is absorbed by the wood members of your house and the wood members of your floor joists, the girder, the sill plate, the rim joists, and the subfloor. Now when the moisture content in the wood exceeds 10% to 14% the wood starts to deteriorate. In other words it's going to rot. Now we've seen floor joists so deteriorated and so saturated with water that you could actually stick a pencil through them. Now when this happens you're looking at major, major dollars to correct your problem. In fact it's not unusual to see floor joists that are so wet that they have lost their structural integrity and have started to compress over top of the girder. Now when you start to have problems with the wood members of your house as I said earlier talking about major dollars to fix them and you can avoid all these potential problems by controlling the humidity underneath your house.

Troy Hill: So as a homeowner I should be checking out my crawl space just to be on the safe side?

Jason Harmon: You sure should be.

Troy Hill: Is there a time on like once a summer, twice a summer, in the winter time? Is there any special time I should be checking this out?

Jason Harmon: Well probably spring is the best time because that's when our humidity tends to be the highest and the humidity of course on the Delmarva Peninsula is traditionally high anyway and this causes one of the issues in a crawl space with the increased humidity that causes wood rot.

Troy Hill: And if I find any problems then I should go online and sign up for a free estimate.

Jason Harmon: That's correct; we'll make an appointment with you and be right out.

Troy Hill: Let's talk about the material that you use as a liner.

Jason Harmon: Okay, Troy, last week on our show we were talking about how we encapsulated a crawl space and the process that we went through to do this and I'm just going to quickly hit that again so that our listeners today are aware of it. We remove the debris and level the ground, we address any groundwater issues, we install the CleanSpace liner and wrap the piers, we extend the liner up the walls to within three inches of the sill plate, we install a sump pump, we seal the cracks, we install a quality dehumidifier, and we replace the crawl space door if necessary. Those were the things we elaborate on last week but you question now the liner. We use a product called CleanSpace and it's designed especially for use in crawl spaces and it's a 20-ml thick reinforced vinyl material made up of several layers. It carries a 25-year warranty - that's a lot more than you'll find anybody else. Now the seams are sealed with a special tape to create an airtight and watertight surface. And while we're talking about materials let's briefly talk about our sump pumps and our dehumidifiers.

Our sump pump has cast iron housing with a steel impeller and it's placed in a one-piece molded sump with an airtight lid. Now the airtight lid prevents moisture from evaporating out of the sump into the air because this is what we're trying to control, it's the moisture in the air. Now there's also a surface drain on the airtight lid and an alarm to warn you if the pumps stop working due to an electrical failure. Now you might say "Why is there a surface drain on this lid?" Well don't forget once we've installed this liner your crawl space is almost going to be like an empty swimming pool. But if you should get a water pipe that breaks you're going to have water on that crawl space and when the water reaches the sump pump it's going to be able to go into the surface drain and drain down into the pump and at the same time the alarm that's on the sump pump, there are actually two alarms on it, one is for a surface water situation, it will go off to alert you that you have an issue with a broken pipe in your basement so that you don't go forever with water running down your crawl space. The surface drain is designed so that no air and no moisture can come up from the sump. It has a ball in it and this ball floats when there's water that gets into the drain and allows the water to go down into the sump pump itself. Now actually we have several pumps and several sump pump configurations to choose from including one with a battery backup in case the power fails. Now around here in the summer time especially we get electrical storms and also in the winter time we get that occasional ice storm that breaks down the power lines we're without power. Now the battery backup pump that can be installed will pump up to 11,000 gallons of water on one battery charge - that's a lot of water. Now this battery is set up in such a way that it's kept charged continually by being plugged into your electrical system and it's just a super thing to have if you're in a situation where you think you might lose power and you do have a water issue in your crawl space. Our dehumidifiers are really top of the line and we have several to choose from. We have one that is specifically designed for crawl spaces. It's a low profile unit and it has two filters in it. Now these filters are designed so that they can remove up particles up to two microns in size. Now this will include your mold spores and your dust mite droppings and all that sort of thing so actually it's cleaning the air in your crawl space. Also last week we talked about odors coming up from your crawl space. And there is also an optional charcoal filter that can be added to this dehumidifier and basically what a charcoal filter does it takes the odors out of your air, even once your crawl space has been encapsulated and the dehumidifier installed this will take most of the odors out anyway but the charcoal filter will be the icing on the cake.

Troy Hill: If you're just tuning in you're listening to Under Your Home with DryZone, Any of the questions that we're talking back here today people can email you and can say "Jason I heard the show. Can you give me more information about that or can you come out and talk to me?" Correct?

Jason Harmon: This is absolutely correct. All they have to do is give us a phone call and we will set an appointment and have someone come out to their house and meet with them. And we're very flexible on our meeting times. We do daytime meetings and appointments. We also do early evening appointments.

Troy Hill: Okay, so if I worked until five o'clock and say "Can you come by at six because I don't get off until five, it's going to take me an hour to get home" and that's okay?

Jason Harmon: You've got it Troy but you've got to feed me dinner.

Troy Hill: Okay, that's all right, I'll feed you, that's not a problem. Jason@dryzone.com or you can visit them on the website which is www.dryzone.com. And when a crawl space is encapsulated does this tend to make the house a little warmer?

Jason Harmon: Oh definitely, Troy, because you're eliminating the air coming in from all of those cracks and leakage points around your house. Another advantage too when you encapsulate a crawl space is that the floors of you house are going to be warmer in the winter time because the crawl space is warmer. Now it's a proven fact that dry air is not only cheaper to heat but it's also cheaper to cool so it's a win-win situation.

Troy Hill: Let's talk about warranty. Can we talk about warranty when we're talking about what you're doing here going under the crawl space and things like that? Is there a warranty that we can talk about?

Jason Harmon: Is there a warranty? There sure is Troy. We've got one of the greatest warranties going. And our warranty on this crawl space encapsulation system is 25 years. Yes, you heard right folks, 25 years. Now here's the great part of that warranty. It's not costing you anything additional - number one - and number two it's a nationally backed warranty. Now what do I mean by nationally backed warranty? We’ll let me explain that to you. A lot of companies will give you a warranty but what happens if they go out of business? You've got no warranty. When we buy these products from our manufacturer we pay them a little bit extra each time we buy them for them to back us up on our warranty. So if Bill decides he wants to retire and go out of business and you have an issue with a problem or a problem with any of the crawl space materials that we have installed the company that we buy these from will back our warranty. What they will do until they establish another dealer in our area they will send someone in from another area - either New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or western Maryland, or Virginia - to cover our warranty so it's not only locally backed by DryZone, it's nationally backed also.

Troy Hill: So I could just call the number and say "Hey, I've got a 25-year warranty, I only used 13 of those 25 years, what can you do for me?" and I know I'm going to be taken care of.

Jason Harmon: That's absolutely correct, it's peace of mind.

Troy Hill: Peace of mind - I like the way you put that - its peace of mind. Earlier you mentioned that you replaced the crawl space entrance door if necessary. Is there something other than the rusty metal one that I have that's available?

Jason Harmon: There sure is Troy. Everybody's familiar with that old rusty metal crawl space door.

Troy Hill: I know. Please tell me that when you go to homes you see a lot of them, I mean I'm not the only one with it.

Jason Harmon: You're not the only one unless crawl space is done their crawl space they've still got an old rusty door or an old rotten wooden one, one of the two. But the problem with those metal doors is number one they're going to rust, eventually they'll get holes in them, they're not an airtight seal, and the other thing is after a while the little channel that they have to slide into gets filled up with dirt and debris and you can't even get them closed. We have something that is a great improvement over the old metal doors. We actually go in and we remove that old steel frame and the steel door and we install a new frame and a new door that's made out of an inorganic material that will not rot and this door can also be painted if you want to paint it, it holds paint very nicely. The other nice thing about this door is it has a seal on it so that when you close it you have an airtight entrance into your crawl space area. Now there is another very unique product that we have if you want to replace your crawl space door. It's called a turtle and it's sort of a misleading name perhaps but it got that name because it has a lid that lifts up on it and sort of looks like a turtle shell. But it's a molded fiber glass unit and it projects from the house, it has a lift up lid, and it makes it a lot easier to gain access to your crawl space especially those crawl space accesses that are partially below grade level. Now you're probably familiar if you've got one that's below grade level you have to be a contortionist to get into your crawl space. The turtle eliminates that problem and makes it for very access. Even though you might not be going down in your crawl space ever you're probably going to have service people going down there to check your heater, air conditioning unit, or air handler or even your plumber going down to check a leak or something like that so it makes it very convenient for them also.

Troy Hill: We've got to take a break but I want to give out some telephone numbers and also some email addresses if people want to get in touch with you and talk to you about anything that we talked about here today.

Jason Harmon: Okay Troy we're easy to get a hold of, you can email me at Jason@dryzone.com or you can get a hold of Bill Anderson, the co-owner of the company at bill@dryzone.com or check us out on the worldwide web at www.dryzone.com.

Troy Hill: And we'll be back with more of Under Your Home with DryZone right after this.

Jason Harmon: Welcome back everybody. Today we're talking about crawl spaces. This is actually the second program in a row concerning crawl spaces because the first one we ran out of time. And we consider such an important issue that we've decided to take it into the second program just dealing with crawl spaces. Delmarva Peninsula I noted for very high humidity, high groundwater tables and issues with crawl spaces. There are probably more crawl spaces on the Delmarva Peninsula than there are basements so this is why we're hitting this issue pretty hard.

Troy Hill: And you know I want to go back just a bit for the people who have just tuned in and talk about the crawl space and I asked the question because once again I don't live in the crawl space of my home so I don't see a need to go under there not unless it's a plumber or not unless the guy's coming in to fix the heating system. I don't feel that there's a need for me to go under there. But you're saying to me "Troy really especially in the summer time you should go when the humidity is high, everybody who owns a home who has crawl space should go and check it out" and if I see standing water in my crawl space should I be concerned?

Jason Harmon: Definitely be concerned if you see standing water but you don't always see standing water when you have an issue because your humidity level and the vapor in the crawl space can be excessive even without standing water and of course this is due from air and filtration from the outside. Now let's face it our humidity here on the Delmarva Peninsula is really high most of the time in the summer. Let's just take for instance an 85 degree temperature with an 85% humidity coming in through a crawl space vent and hitting the crawl space air which is much cooler and the water pipes that are a lot cooler and the air conditioning ducts that are a lot cooler, what's going to happen? You're going to have condensation. Condensation creates the moisture which creates the vapor which creates the problems.

Troy Hill: So if I go in my crawl space and I see a spider should I be concerned?

Jason Harmon: Not necessarily concerned with a spider but crawl spaces are a habitat for all kinds of varmints, not only spiders but bugs and crickets and also snakes. We run into a snake once in a while, in fact the other day one of our inspectors ran into one very unexpectedly and sort of scared the dickens out of him because it looked a little bit like a copperhead but it turned out to be what they call a rat snake.

Troy Hill: And the reason why they're under there is because it's kind of cool.

Jason Harmon: Well it's not only cool but there's moisture and most of these insects and bugs require moisture to live and lot of them like dark places which is your crawl space. And when we encapsulate that crawl space and we do away with the moisture, we do away with the bugs.

Troy Hill: You've got it. Ladies and gentlemen remember to check the crawl space because it is important and once again like Jason said if there is lying water in that crawl space you need to pick up the phone and at least say "I need somebody to come down here and inspect this right away.

Jason Harmon: This is true, Troy, and as I said earlier you don't have to have standing water to have an issue but one of the things if you're a homeowner and you're actually going to be checking this yourself to look for is the fact that you might have some water stains in your blocks, your foundation walls on the blocks. This would indicate that at some point in time you did have standing water. Another place that you can look is on the piers that support our girder. A pier will wick water, it's just like a wick, so if it has water stains on it it's another issue or another indication I should say that you have a water issue. You can look at your pipes if they have moisture on them, dripping water on them you've got an issue, you've got humidity that is way too high. As far as the wood members of your house are concerned it's not a situation where you're going to be able to determine yourself whether the moisture content is really too high, we can do that for you. Another thing to look for most homes when they're built the codes require that some kind of ground cover be put down and what most of your contractors install is a 6-ml polyethylene plastic that's laid down and just lapped over, seams are not sealed in any way over a period of time with trades people going in, this material gets moved around so some of the ground is exposed but the other thing that happens is if you ever get water I there and it's going to lay on top of this polyethylene plastic it's going to bring with it dirt and when it evaporates it's going to leave dirt. So if you've got spots that show dirt on top of your polyethylene it's an indication that you probably at some time have had water in there.

Troy Hill: So anything we're talking about here today, checking the crawl space, things to look for Jason is one of the guys who can speak on this if you have a non-profit organization or a school or a rental company you come and you talk about these types of things and things you should look for.

Jason Harmon: Yes we do. Education is a big thing with our company not only for the general public, educating them about the problems and issues that they have but also our own people are continually going to continuing education, programs on the products that we sell.

Troy Hill: How many people are working for DryZone?

Jason Harmon: We actually have five sales people that work for us. We have an office staff of four. And we have installation crews - about a dozen on the different crews we have now.

Troy Hill: There's a good staff that's working out and about covering Delmarva and let's look at the map when we say Delmarva just to make sure that everybody knows what we're talking about. When we say Delmarva we're talking north, east, south, west - give me some towns.

Jason Harmon: We're going from the Pennsylvania line down to the tip of Virginian and from ocean to bay.

Troy Hill: You've got it. So that's the Delmarva Peninsula that you guys cover.

Jason Harmon: That's correct.

Troy Hill: What would it cost for someone from your company to come back and take a look at my crawl space and tell me if I have any issues that need to be looked at or talked about?

Jason Harmon: Absolutely nothing. If you think you might have one of the issues that we've been talking about here give us a call and we'll make an appointment for one of our inspectors to visit your home, make an inspection of your crawl space, and when he does this he's going to take a lot of photographs in your crawl space. He's also going to measure the humidity outside, in other words the air outside of your crawl space; he's also going to measure the humidity in your crawl space. In addition to that he has a little gadget where he can measure the moisture content of the wood members in your crawl space - the floor joists, girders, etc. And once he comes out of the crawl space he is going to go up in your house and meet with you. He's going to take his laptop computer, he's going to load these pictures onto his computer and he's going to show you exactly what he has found in your crawl space. Now it might be you don't have an issue, it might be you have an issue that only requires a minor thing to take care of it or if you have an issue that requires more he can take care of that also. What he's going to do is design something that is going to solve the issues that you have. He's also going to show you on his computer a short video of how we go about installing these products and what the products look like. This is important for you to know what you're buying. Now here's the big thing, Troy, on the spot he's going to be able to quote you a price for doing this. Unlike a lot of our competitors who send somebody out to go under and take a bunch of pictures and take them back to the office and some guy sitting in an air conditioned office and he's going to figure your price without ever having seen the crawl space itself except for the pictures. We don't do that. We take the pictures and the guy that does the inspection also is capable of quoting you the price for doing the job. I think I see a question popping into your mind right now so I'm going to head it off.

Troy Hill: Go ahead; let's see how good you are.

Jason Harmon: I think you're going to say "Jason, how much is it going to cost for me to get this done?"

Troy Hill: He's good.

Jason Harmon: I really can't answer that because what it's going to cost is going to depend on what's required to solve your issue. So we can't just have a blanket figure that we're going to quote you for what it's going to cost. Next question you might have is "Well you know, I really might not be able to afford right now what it's going to cost." Well Troy we've addressed that issue also.

Troy Hill: I'm just going to cross all my questions and let you play Troy and Jason at the same time but that's a good point.

Jason Harmon: So what we have done we have arrangements with some institutions where we can have the job financed for you and we have a number of different programs and the person that quotes you the price at your house will be able to go over these programs with you and be able to lead you to where to go to get your financing if you need it. You hit a point - this is your home. When you have an issue you do not want to let this issue go. It needs to be addressed. Now I'm going to tell you a little bit of a horror story and this happened to one of our other dealers in another area and it was not actually a crawl space issue but it will demonstrate how quickly you need to act on something. This was on a basement and it was a foundation issue and the wall was bowing in. He called one of our friends that has the dealership, the friend went out, looked at the basement wall bowing, quoted him a price for stabilizing the basement wall, and told him "You need to address this immediately" and the guy said "Well I'm going to have to think about it for a while." Well what happened that night? His basement wall caved in. Now should he have said go with it right then on the spot the dealer wouldn't have been able to get to it that quick but that gives you an idea of how quickly something can happen. So you don't want to let an issue with your home not be addressed and corrected because down the road it's going to cost you more money, a lot more money.

Troy Hill: And take into consideration it is your home and you're going to be living there for the next 50 or 60 years so you want to make sure that everything is addressed and addressed properly.

Jason Harmon: This is true - at some point in time your home's going to be sold, whether it's you, your children or somebody and if that home has issues then they're not going to get the price for it that they should get. Now the other thing that our inspector is going to do when he visits you he's going to leave you with a book and it's called Crawl Space Science and this book is written in layman's terms, you can understand it, it doesn't have engineering talk.

Troy Hill: I can understand it?

Jason Harmon: You can understand it. As what I tell people it's first grade level. It's very well written and it's very plain and it explains exactly what the conditions are and what the solutions to these conditions are also. So in short we can design you a program to take care of any issue that you have.

Troy Hill: I've got to get down the hall because I've got to get ready for another show which is coming up in about another minute or so but I do want to give out some phone numbers and I do want to give out some email addresses and I do want to give out a website.

Jason Harmon: Okay Troy, here we go. I hope you all have your pencil ready. You can email me at Jason@dryzone.com or Bill Anderson at bill@dryzone.com or check us out on the web at www.dryzone.com. Thanks for being with me this morning, Troy.

Troy Hill: I'm enjoying this. Is Bill coming back? Tell him to stay out a couple more weeks. I'm kind of enjoying it.

Jason Harmon: I'll try to get him to stay out a couple more weeks. Actually he's very busy right now, its summer time, we've got fairs and different shows in different areas and we try to participate in all of these as part of our educational process.

Troy Hill: You've got it. Well it's been a pleasure being with you on Under Your Home with DryZone.

Jason Harmon: Jason@dryzone.com, bill@dryzone.com or check us on the web www.dryzone.com.

Troy Hill: Jason it's been a pleasure.

Jason Harmon: Thanks Troy.

What are SmartJacks and why do we use them?

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:17:35 -0400

Male Speaker: It's time for Under Your Home with DryZone. DryZone inMilton,Delaware-your complete source for basement and crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing; 24-hour service - we never sleep at DryZone, Contact online at DryZone.com\theduck.

Bill Anderson: Yes, it's 6:30 in the morning so I guess that means it's time for our radio show.

Jason Harmon: I think I've got the other eye open now, Bill. Good morning, Bill, it's good to see you again.

Bill Anderson: We've been doing this thing for a good long while now. We were sitting there talking at the end of last week's show that we really haven't talked that much about SmartJacks and what you do with a SmartJack and what is a SmartJack and why would you use a SmartJack and I kind of wanted to actually do some introductions here, I kind of wanted to talk about what they are and why we use them and kind of the whole shebang with it. My email address is bill@dryzone.com; Jason's email address is Jason@dryzone.com, and our website is just DryZone.com. Jason, what's a SmartJack? Tell me why we use a SmartJack, what it is, lay it on me.

Jason Harmon: Bill the SmartJack is probably one of the greatest things that have ever been invented and this product has been specifically designed for a specific purpose. A house is settled and one of the things that we see a lot is where the supporting piers

Bill Anderson: What does that mean by the way - our house is settled?

Jason Harmon: It's sunk into the ground.

Bill Anderson: It's not supposed to happen?

Jason Harmon: Not supposed to happen but in a lot of cases the piers supporting the girder of the house actually pushed down into the ground and this causes problems with the structure of your house with settling of floors and warping and a lot of other things. This product which is called a SmartJack has been designed specifically to correct the problem of sagging girders. And a SmartJack is an adjustable piece of equipment and it's installed in such a way that in the future if adjustments need to be done they can be done very easily. Now what we do is we go in to a crawl space area and underneath the girder we dig a pit that is 30 inches deep, 24 inches square and we start filling this pit with a number 57 engineered gravel and every two inches this gravel is hydraulically compacted until we get up to about six inches of the surface of the floor area of the crawl space and we install a pre-cast concrete base. Now this concrete base is an angled piece of concrete and it is cast specifically for the purpose of holding the base of the SmartJack. Now the column of the SmartJack is a very, very heavy tubular column. It comes in long lengths and they're cut specifically for each job to the length that's necessary, set in this concrete base, and then there's a heavy duty cap with an adjustable threaded rod inserted into the top. This is put underneath the girder of the house and it's adjusted so that we can actually in most cases raise the house back to somewhere close to the original position. We can't guarantee total lift but in most cases we can get lift to bring this girder back up into position. The nice thing about this product is it's engineered to support up to 60,000 pounds that's per jack. We have a computer program that we use when we do the design and figure the necessary amount of SmartJacks that are required for your particular issue and this computer program actually tells us how many jacks to use. The house then is supported, we transfer the weight of the house from the existing piers to the SmartJacks and this gives us a stable compact area for the house to rest on.

Bill Anderson: So what you're saying is we're digging a great big hole, we're filling it with the proper type of footing, and then we're putting in a heavy wall post that's zinc-plated. And you know why it's important it's zinc-plated?

Jason Harmon: Oh sure, we've got moisture in that crawl space and we don't want it to rust.

Bill Anderson: That's exactly it and really it's actually going to do a lot better than like the old hot dip galvanization because if we're going to try to adjust these things we need to make sure that the threads are actually working so that's the reason why everything's zinc-plated. So zinc plating almost looks like a stainless steel, probably not quite finished on it but definitely it gives the appearance of a stainless steel post. What I normally see, Jason, when I go underneath a home is Chuck in a truck - we talked about Chuck lately right - Chuck in a truck went in there and he took a concrete block, a cinder block, and he dug a little bit of a hole, he stuck it inside of it, pushed the dirt up around until that block looks nice and level then he takes a 4x4 wooden post, makes it a half inch/three-quarter inch longer and he sticks it flush up top and he starts beating it in at the bottom so that way we're actually getting a little bit of a lift. How long do you think that's going to last?

Jason Harmon: It won't last very long because that concrete block is going to push right into the unstable soil.

Bill Anderson: Like you said a minute ago that's settlement so when the ground gets a little soft that thing's going downhill. It kills me because there was a house that I went into, Jason, which had seven of them in there. That was a $9000 project somebody spent for a 4x4 that literally they only use one 4x4 from Lowe's and maybe they got the same block at Lowe's so that's $1.20/$15.0 a block and then they spent maybe $20 on the wood and charged them $9000 to do it and all they did was dig eight inches into the ground so it's a buyer beware, we have engineers on staff and if there are issues, there are questions we let our engineers talk with whoever they need to talk to and it's one of those things that we would have cost way, way, way, way, way less in that scenario and you would have had something that was done, done right, done with an engineer involved because things are ICC tested and ICC is basically it's like - how would you explain it Jason - like a governing council for engineers?

Jason Harmon: You're right, that's a pretty good explanation for it.

Bill Anderson: So things are ICC tested. It kills me that they overspent that much money and we went down there and what had happened was that they actually started shifting so when they went underneath the girder and then things started twisting a little bit that started actually pushing stress on the girder which kind of made that kind of caddywompus. It's a nightmare to go in there and fix what somebody tried to go in there and do and obviously Chuck in the truck went out of business a long time ago so who do they call? We're like "Well this is what your problem is" and they're like "Man, I just finished paying off that loan, are you kidding me?" and I'm like "Well here's your picture. This is the reason why we take pictures so you can see what's going on."

Jason Harmon: This is another indication, Bill, where when someone has an issue involving the structure of their house they need to contact somebody like DryZone and I'll put a big plug in for us, who specialize in doing that. We don't do landscaping tomorrow and foundation work today, this is our business. Now one of the things that I want to bring out is I get a lot of questions from people saying "Why do you use gravel as a base rather than pour concrete?" Well actually the gravel creates a better base force, number one; number two is -Bill Anderson: Why does it create better base?

Jason Harmon: It rains for one thing; the moisture will go through the concrete.

Bill Anderson: But it rains and it gives also a little bit too it's kind of like you're giving or taking like a wet bag of sand and try to push that into the dirt, how far do you think you're going to advance that?

Jason Harmon: Not far.

Bill Anderson: Not far. Normally those concrete footings especially when people are digging the hole and everybody who's ever dug a hole that's more than a foot deep knows that at the bottom of that hole it's a lot more narrower at the bottom than it is at the top because most people won't turn their shovel around and try to square off that hole. So if you could actually pour with like plaster of Paris or whatever and pull it out of the ground it would almost look like a bottom of a nail. Nails are meant to be advanced into the ground, right? So if you have some ground that's soft and you have weight above it it's almost like hammering this footing into the ground which means it settles and it sinks. When it sinks then you start having sagging floors.

Jason Harmon: Well the other thing too Bill is that if someone tells you that they're going to pour a concrete forint and do something beware because number one they've got to go in, they've got to dig the hole and pour the footing, then they've got to leave because that concrete has to dry and cure and if it's not cured for the proper amount of time it's not going to be structurally sound either.

Bill Anderson: I was talking toGaryabout it the other day; it's like 28 days for it to really fully cure.

Jason Harmon: If it's done properly, yes.

Bill Anderson: If it's done properly. I have seen people go in there in three days.

Jason Harmon: And the pressure on that new concrete is such that it's going to actually cause the concrete to crack. So by using the gravel it's a much better situation for supporting the SmartJack and also in a lot of cases we can put in a number of these SmartJacks in one day's time and it's actually saving the people a lot of money by doing this.

Bill Anderson: I was down inVirginia Beachwith my production manager I guess that was a couple of months ago now and there were some different type of engineering things that they were trying to do with the different posts and everything. It's amazing what they were doing down there, I mean, they had crews that were up to almost 18 jacks a day. We're not quite that fast, we're between 8 to 10 jacks a day, but they were like 18 jacks a day. I was down there working with their crews and I would be the first person to admit they worked way harder than I do and there was a guy that I was working with and he was just like "Billy, come on man, you're holding us up." I always thought that I did pretty well and like I said those guys they got 18, it was ridiculous how fast they were moving, they were just like machines down there.

Jason Harmon: By using this system, using the gravel and using the pre-cast concrete base the weight from the house creates what's called a bulb of significant stress and actually this is an engineering term but what it means is that all the stress is not being put directly underneath, it's being spread but due to the shape of the concrete base that this post is put on.

Bill Anderson: It's kind of like an earthquake, the epicenter of the earthquake that's where most of the damage happens and then you start getting those concentric rings going out from it so the intensity of that earthquake is kind of lost the farther it goes out through those rings, it's sort of like if you take a rock and you throw it in the lake or whatever, a stream, you'll actually see the little rings coming off of it and that's where it starts to lose its intensity so it actually is dissipating that force right through the soil.

Jason Harmon: Don't let anybody confuse the SmartJack with what we call a teleports jack which is an adjustable temporary support that you can buy in the bib box stores. It might look similar in nature but it is totally different and it is a whole lot stronger than anything you can buy in the big box stores. And this jack has been designed by engineers specifically for this purpose and as far as I know, Bill, I think we are the only company on theDelmarva Peninsulathat actually has access to this product. Am I correct on that?

Bill Anderson: Yes, like I said it is proprietary to basement systems. When you just said that those teleports jacks and you can call them whatever you want to call them but you'll see them in basements all the time, they're just a little bit shorter. If you actually go down to box stores you will see right on the packaging it says that it's only used for a light duty structure for temporary support which in my world there's nothing light about a house. For heaven's sake even a rancher - I can bring my load calculator out and tell you pretty much what it weighs per square foot - it's a huge amount of weight so there's nothing like duty about our houses so why should we put something that's as light duty.

Jason Harmon: And as I said earlier these SmartJacks are designed to support up to 60,000 pounds of load.

Bill Anderson: Talk about a vertical load too so I mean that wood that you use in your house is going to break well before the jacks ever break.

Jason Harmon: The other nice thing too about the manufacture of this particular product is the fact that on staff they have engineers and if you have a contractor or an engineer involved with any kid of a project that you're working on they can talk directly to our engineers and there's no cost to them for that.

Bill Anderson: Well Jason I'll tell you it looks like our producer here is telling me we've got to take a break so I do want to give out our email addresses. They are bill@dryzone.com, Jason@dryzone.com, and our website is www.DryZone.com

Bill Anderson: All right folks, we're back. This is Bill from DryZone and I'm always accompanied by Jason.

Jason Harmon: Hi Bill, glad to be back.

Bill Anderson: Our website is DryZone.com; my email address is bill@dryzone.com; and Jason's is obviously Jason@dryzone.com. So Jason before break we were talking about SmartJacks and we were talking about why you should use them, why you should see them. Besides the obvious are there any type of signs that we're seeing out in the field that the homeowners are saying "Listen, this is how I knew some of them were wrong besides everything's buckling."

Jason Harmon: We're seeing so many different things Bill. A lot of it is obvious; there are some things that are not so obvious. To give you some actual things that I have observed recently I had a call from a gentleman who is in a house that's only five years old. The first thing he noticed was that his door to the laundry room would not close. So he felt it might have been a little bit of settlement or something or maybe the door swelled. He actually cut the door off at the top so it would close. Then when he actually closed the door it wouldn't latch because the bolt missed going into the keeper by a quarter of an inch so the house had settled that much. Then he noticed a round column in the house near the foyer that had dropped away from the ceiling about three quarters of an inch, he had hardwood floors and the shoe molding around the bottom of the wall in some places had separated from the floor approximately a quarter of an inch. And in inspecting the crawl space we found that he had issues with his piers that supported the girder. They had actually settled into the ground and had caused his house to actually start to fall into the ground from the center out. We're able to take care of this issue for him.

The sad thing is his house was only five years old and this issue should not have occurred in that short a period of time on a new house like that. We're seeing other things too, windows that are not operating properly, as I've already said doors that do not close properly, we had an issue where the vanity in one of the bathrooms had pulled away from the wall and the owner didn't know exactly what was causing it but upon inspection we found that that end of the house there had been floor settlement due to the fact that a pier had started settling into the ground and this had caused the floor to drop and of course the vanity was sitting on the floor and it caused it to pull away from the wall somewhat. There are any number of things which can indicate that you do have a problem. Another thing that we have found and this was actually just a situation of poor construction - they had used a concrete block pier to support the girder but when it was installed it was not installed directly under the girder so as a result the girder was sitting to one side of the pier which was putting all the pressure from that portion of the girder on one side of the pier which caused the pier to actually start tipping to the side.

Bill Anderson: So basically it was unbalanced?

Jason Harmon: Unbalanced, correct.

Bill Anderson: I remember actually seeing the pictures from the house you were talking about and you wouldn't think it's supposed to happen, the girders are supposed to be lined up right in the middle of those piers, try to counterbalance things. I didn't think that that as rocket science. So every single one of those piers I saw on those pictures the girder was off to one side here and off to the other side here and then the next three was all off to one side and you'd actually start to see the thing basically rotate. There was another house that I went with an inspector on Jason, it was down in Daggsboro and the girder, the thing was off the side, it was like literally sitting right on the corner of this thing off the pier and the girder had rotated so bad that it was over a good half an inch from the top to the bottom - that's how square the thing became. The things that the homeowners found out was there was termite damage in the home first of all. The termite guy said that they had put some insulation on the walls to try to insulate these things. I don't know what insulation had to do with termites but he was insulating the walls to stop the termites. Well the idiot who did it put the insulation right up over top the wall, right up over top the sill plate, so nobody could ever inspect for termites and the termites were literally crawling up behind the insulation right into the wood. It was this great little tunnel for them and they just attacked it, attacked it, and the front part of it obviously they knew they had termite damage at that point because the subfloor was getting eaten out. When I went down there where the termites were it was where this piers were off center and a lot of it had to do with the fact that it wasn't centered and I also had to deal with the fact that the girder itself was undersized so it was too small of a girder in the first place.

Jason Harmon: Now Bill it's unfortunate that some of these things get shoddily done that should not have been done the way they were but fortunately we do have the equipment, the knowledge, and the products to take care of these issues and it's just a matter of us being able to get under there and take a look, see what your issue is, and we can tell you just what it's going to take to correct that issue and our products are American made with that little plug in here too. The foundation support products are made in theMidwestand they are very, very heavy duty products and they have been designed especially for particular uses. It's not a general product that's been made for a lot of different uses; they are made for specific uses.

Bill Anderson: You'll see a lot of these pictures, Jason, of these houses. Maybe they're not new at this point, they're 10/15/20 years old and you'll see everybody's homemade solution over the years. Somebody will take some 4x4's and slam that in there, sometimes you'll get four or five cinder blocks that have been pushed together and then they start taking a bunch of 2x4's and 2x6's and everything else that was left over. They'll take a floor jack like a car jack basically and try to lift it up to try to stick these shims in there on one joist, it's not even across multiple joists, it's just one joist, because they think that's the only place they're having issues with and then all the other joists around it start thinking so you have one that's up super high, some that are down super low, and I've talked with their engineers plenty of times about it and it's the biggest thing that gets on their nerves because they're like "What was somebody thinking? That makes no sense. There's no reason in the world why it should have happened" except for Chuck in the truck came down, it was a $300 project, somebody said "Hey, its $300 I'm going to sell the house." "Great, let's go, let's do this" and now there are major issues not, it's just not fair.

Jason Harmon: Bill I was in a house the other day and the people had a bathroom door and a laundry room door that were not closing properly and they were getting ready to remodel their kitchen and they were concerned that they might have some kind of an issue. This particular house did have a basement and in checking in the basement when the house was built the plumber but two floor joists completely in two to put in some drainage piping from a toilet and a bathtub and then just scabbed a piece onto the side. Well over the years this particular area became weak and has started settling not all at one time, just a little bit at a time, to the point now where the doors upstairs are not opening properly. So there are a lot of different things that can cause settling issues in a house. This one was just somebody that didn't know what they were doing when they cut the floor joist.

Bill Anderson: Sometimes it isn’t even just Chuck in the truck messing things up, kind of like you said, sometimes things are just - maybe they were just built wrong in the first place and they just say that everything was right, let's say that the original contractor did every single thing that they could do to make it right and it was right when they did it.

Well we still forget one of the main key components and the foundation issue because that soils and that's something that we just can't control because even if they went in there and they compacted the soils and compacted the soils and they did all the things that they said that they promised the homeowner they were going to do they could still be wrong because all we need is a lot of rain to change the dynamics of that situation and then once the ground's wet it's soft.

Jason Harmon: And we've seen that situation here on theDelmarva Peninsulain the last few years. Here in thePeninsulaeverybody's been to the ocean and when you go down by the water and start digging a hole it fills in just about as fast as you dig it because it's sand. Sand is fine when it's dry and it compacts nicely but you add water to sand and it becomes very liquid. And here on thePeninsulawe have a lot of sand in our soil and with the amount of water that we've had in the last few years in certain areas soil is becoming very liquid and causing foundation problems.

Bill Anderson: It's amazing Jason. When I first moved here fromColoradowhen I was a kid we used to go down to the beach and I always thought it was neat that you would see these houses on stilts. They're on these great big telephone poles and I always that that was because that the ocean would truly just on like storms and everything else I thought the thing would fly out. I mean it's amazing how many times I've talked to homeowners and they say "Yes, that's what they're for." Well it's not, it's because the ground will get so soft that if they built their houses at ground level they'd be falling apart so they're basically nailing them into the ground.

Jason Harmon: Yes, the houses that are built on pilings, the pilings actually do two things - they raise the house up above the flood plain level but they actually create the foundation for the house because by trying to put in a standard foundation using poured concrete it was just impossible to do because the water table was so high. In fact we recently did a job near the beach where it was requiring a product that we sell called helical piles and we hit water at 10 inches. And the reason for putting in these helical piles was so that the foundation could be poured using a special head on top of the helical pile to support the foundation.

Bill Anderson: That was that elevator job there.

Jason Harmon: Yes, that was the elevator shaft.

Bill Anderson: So it was basically a house that was existing and this house was what - I don't know 30/40 /50/60 feet up in the air, it was a pretty big house, it was a big beach house and I guess the homeowners were getting older so they figured instead of having to climb all those stairs they decided to put an elevator in there. Well somebody had a little forethought and everything and said "Well what happens if the ground gets wet? This thing's going to get real top heavy, what's going to happen?" Like Jason said we went in there and drove these helical into the ground which is like great big screws and it was basically anchoring the foundation so it wouldn't get top heavy and tip over.

Jason Harmon: So folks if you have any concerns about whether or not you have problems with settling of your house due to floor joists or girders that have been compromised for one reason or another please give us a call. We can send an inspector out, we can check to see if there is a problem, and if there is a problem we can give you the solution to that problem and be able to take care of it and possibly save the house for you.

Bill Anderson: So Jason I'll tell you what I'm going to let you do the exit stuff this afternoon. Do you want to give everybody our email addresses and web addresses?

Jason Harmon: I'd be glad to Bill. You can reach Bill directly by email at bill@dryzone.com or myself at Jason@dryzone.com or check us out on the web at DryZone.com.

Bill Anderson: Well Jason I'll tell you I appreciate you doing this with me. I know we have to get up early in the morning to do it so I think we're going to have to go find some Starbucks. I'm still a little bit tired this morning. But we'll be back here next week and like I said email your questions, we do get a lot of questions, and hopefully we've gotten back to just about everybody with their questions. If you want a presentation done like Jason was talking about last week with your church and with your real estate office, even if it's just one person, we can come out and do real estate or just any kind of presentation just to one person. So if you have a small company and you still want to learn about it for heaven's sake please have us out there.

Bill Anderson: So I appreciate it Jason and folks we'll see you next week.

Jason Harmon: See you next week Bill.

Male Speaker: You've been listening to Under Your Home with DryZone. DryZone inMilton,Delaware-your complete source for basement and crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing; 24-hour service - we never sleep at DryZone, Contact us online at DryZone.com\theduck.

Why the Products we use are Better!

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:03:27 -0400

Male Speaker: Each time for Under Your Home with Dry Zone. DryZone in Milton, Delaware. Your complete source for basement, crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing. 24 hour service. We never sleep at Dry Zone. contact us online at dryzone.com/theduck.

Bill Anderson: Good morning. Happy, I guess, still a new year. This is Bill Anderson and our little program here is called Under Your Home with Dry Zone. And as Jason keeps telling me, he's going to keep coming back. So men true to his words, Jason, how are you this morning?

Jason Harmon: I'm great, Bill, thanks for asking and I sort of enjoy talking about our products on the radio and I hope our listeners are getting a little bit of education about some of our products and some of the problems they might have in their own homes.

Bill Anderson: You know, Jason, I got a call this week and they always say why do you wait until the end to give out your name and your phone number, because they get so involved in listening to the --

Jason Harmon: Commentary?

Bill Anderson: Yeah, the thing we're doing here. Sorry about that. Out website is dryzone.com/theduck so contact us today with any questions. And, you know, you can always reach me and Jason, we said last week, and they may our emails fairly simple. It's either Bill or jason@dryzone.com -- not Bill or Jason but its bill@dryzone.com or jason@dryzone.com. Well, Jason, what are we going to talk about today?

Jason Harmon: Well, Bill, I think today we ought to try and tell our people why our products are the best on the market and why it's an investment and why they're better than a lot of other products on the market for sale today. And let's start out with sump pumps. I think our sump pumps are really neat. We have a selection of sump pumps available. We have a pump called a smart sump, which is designed especially for crawl spaces. It has a lower profile to the sump pit itself. And our -- all of our sump pits are actually perforated around them to allow subsurface water to get into the sump before it actually gets up to the surface. And the pump we use is a pump that has cast iron housing and it has a steel impeller. Now, you'll see on the market for sale sump pumps that have plastic housings and plastic impellers and you're not going to get much life out of those pumps. You'll find pumps that have a very, very simple float to them to the point where the float actually hangs up. And when the pump -- when the float hangs up on your sump pump, then your sump pump is not going to kick on when necessary. Another nice thing about our sump pumps, we have sealed lid on them. So why have a sealed lid? Well, very simply, to keep the water that's in the sump pit from evaporating into the air in either your crawl space of your basement, because that's what we are trying to eliminate is the humidity in a crawl space or a basement. In addition, the lid itself has a surface drain on it should you get a broken pipe or something that's going to put water on your floor? The water can get in to the surface drain of the sump pump and go down and be pumped out. The other nice thing about our units is that we have an alarm on the lid also and should something happen in a way of a broken pipe or, heaven forbid, a broken sewer line and it dumps a lot of water in your crawl space or your basement, once this water gets to the lid of the sump pump, it will set this alarm off to know that you have a problem and with your pump itself. The other nice thing is I say we have a variety of pumps available. We could actually put multiple pumps in a single sump container. And what we do there is we set at the lowest level, one-third horsepower sump pump and set a few inches higher as a one half horsepower pump. And we can even install in the same sump a battery backup should your electric go off and the battery backup pump will pump up to 1100 gallons of water -- I'm sorry, 11,000 gallons of water on one battery charge.

Bill Anderson: Yeah, I think, bigger than the swimming pool, really. I mean how many gallons actually -- I don't know how many it actually is but, that's a lot of gallon.

Jason Harmon: It's a lot of gallons, depends on the size of your swimming pool, Bill.

Bill Anderson: Well, that's true, you know.

Jason Harmon: But we have a pump set up for just about every condition that you might run into. Do you want to elaborate a little bit on some of these pumps?
Bill Anderson: Yeah, let's actually -- I'll tell you what, let's actually get in on the mechanics of -- coz all the pump Sherry, they're certain type of brand name, okay, and the actual sump pump itself, the actual mechanical part of it. And those are actually, we use what's called a Zoller Sump Pump, Z-O-L-L-E-R. Zoller is actually made in Louisville, Kentucky. They haven't really changed their design much in 80 years. So it's this great big cast iron sump pump.

Jason Harmon: Made in the U.S.A.

Bill Anderson: Made in the U.S.A., yeah. What else is made in the U.S.A.? So -- and a matter of fact a lot of our most, not just a lot, but most of our things that we install, are a product that's made in the U.S.A. installed by American. What a wonderful concept, Jason. So, like I said, going back to Zoller pumps, they're, you know, whether it's a third horsepower -- and don't let all pumps fool you because I've seen some sump pumps out there that you can get from the box stores that says -- they're like, you know, 50 horsepower sump pump. You know, and it sounds all great. But the impeller, number one, is this little teeny tiny plastic fan, then it's just this little teeny tiny plastic fan spinning. How much water is that really going to move? You know, you can actually stick your finger in there and stop it with -- or if you stick your finger inside our impellers, we're going to make sausage. So when we talk about the pumps, there's a lot of things you got to look for coz all pumps, I am telling you now, are not created equal. So, great big cast iron pumps and it has an epoxy coding on it. And the reason why they use epoxy coding is for the salinity in the water because stainless steel sump pumps in salt water will pit and rush just like everything else. This epoxy actually protects the metal. So don't let these great big stainless steel sump pumps for you because there's a lot of salinity in the water down here. I mean, this is -- we're salty water kind of folk down here. So the motor itself is actually encased in oil and that's real important because, if the sump ever gets turned on and it can't shot off for some reason, then we don't have to worry about it burning up because with plastic, plastic is just going to melt when it gets too hot. And if everything inside is plastic, then [inaudible] [0:06:24] at the end of the day you have a potential for some fire hazards. I'm not saying you're going to have a fire, but like I said, at least the [inaudible] [0:06:29] fills water and really hot things when plastic is melting doesn't make a good combination. There's just nothing good that's going to come from that scenario. Well, we have this filled up container and, like I said, it has the oil in it and, you know, it has the great big impeller. And when you look at the actual pump curve, which is how they measure the flow and everything else in the sump pump, it actually talks to you about add an eight foot head or, you know, being discharged to eight feet high, can discharge up to a third horsepower, can actually discharge up to 2300 gallons an hour, you know. And that's an inch and a half pipe. Lamest term is that's a fire hose. I mean, that's pumping out water like fire hose. And anybody who's ever seen a sump pump line break underneath the house or even outside coz we, you know, we always test our sump pumps and show our employees, that's part of our testing, is we'll stick a great big barrel of water and we put to sump pump in it and we keep adding links of pipes to see how far it will go up, so these guys will understand that, you know, for every elbow, and most folks don't know this, Jason, for every elbow that you put on a discharge pipe, you lose five feet ahead. So if you're snaking around a whole bunch of weird thing inside your crawl space or your basement, you're losing pressure because you're having some restriction. And those are the things that we actually, you know, we take into account. Our guys, our installers, our foreman’s understand that the more restriction they put on pipe, the less effective your pump is going to be. So we go with that acronym, you know, KISS, Keep It Simple, and Stupid. They look at the situation, they look at the home, and they say, okay, this is what makes the best, this is what's going to make your home the most effective or you solution the most effective.

Jason Harmon: The other thing that we do that we have found a lot of other people do not do is where we have a third and a half horsepower sump pump in the same pit; we have a separate discharge line to the outside for each pump. And the reason for doing this is, if you try to bring both of those pump lines into the same discharge line, which is usually only about an inch and a half, and both of them are kicking on at the same time for the reason you're getting a lot of order in your base -- crawl space, then you're restricting the flow that that pump is able to put out. So we put a separate discharge line in for each of the electric pumps. Now, in addition to that, each of these discharge lines is going to have a check valve which is set fairly close to the pump. Now, what this does when that pump kicks off, it prevents the water that's in that discharge line from running back down into the sump and causing the pump to keep kicking on over and over again. Our position there is to prevent that water that's in the discharge line from returning to the sump. And this is important because if it's not done properly, your sump is going -- sump pump is going to be kicking on more than necessary.

Bill Anderson: Yeah, the term is actually called short cycling, and what that does is reduces the life of the pump. When you just mentioned, you know -- I was talking about Chuck in the Truck, right, that's my favorite saying now, I guess. But, you know, you'd be surprised how many times we walk into a house where we just got behind Chuck in the Truck and he would take, you know, these two inch and a half discharge lines, merge it. A lot of times it just runs it into the sewer which is a huge no, no, you know. Any way you look at it, that's bad because if -- what's Murphy's Law, right. Murphy's Law says that if it can, it will happen at the worst possible time. So you're going to have both sump pumps running into your sewer while you flush the toilet, have the dishwasher and the washing machine going. And that's going to basically pressurize that thing that's not supposed to be pressurized. And pop goes the whistle and the last thing I ever, ever want to have happen in my house, Jason, is a sewer lake. So, I mean, that's -- you know, there's nothing good going to happen from a sewer lake. So let's just avoid that mess literary right from the beginning and let's take, you know, an inch and a half column of water and direct that outside because, if you have two inch and a half columns of water into one pipe, you've overloaded the pipe or you've made one pump not work effectively, or both pumps not work effectively, so just doesn't make sense but it's just an easier way to do it, and that's the reason why Chuck in the Truck charges you a lot less because it's a lot easier to do it. Doesn't make it right; just mean it was easier for him to do it.

Jason Harmon: The other thing we do with our -- sump pump discharge lines is that once we exit the house we install a product called an ice guard. And this product was developed by the owner of the Basement Systems Company for specific purpose. Sometimes the discharge line will become frozen in the wintertime or clog for one reason or another. And the water cannot escape and it puts back pressure on your pump. Well, this ice guard is designed so that it allows the water to escape should the line be plugged from their -- onto the pop up for some reason, so that you never have a problem with a back pressure on your pump because the water cannot escape. Now, the other thing we do once this line access the house and goes into the ice guard, it converts to a four inch line and this is taken underground, run away from your house, and depending on the grade of the lot, one of two different products is used to go on the end of this line. If there's quite a slope going away from the house, we use a product which allows the water to come out right on the surface. And it's slotted, it's called -- it's a landscape outlet. But if the greatest fairly level we use what's called a pop up and the four inch pipe goes into this pop up and once the sump pump kicks on, it causes a little inch and a half diameter lid to pop up to which allows the water to escape. So we have products for any type of installation as required.

Bill Anderson: Well Jason, listen, in a few seconds we're going to have to take a break here. We got to let the advertisers have their time. You can still reach us online at dryzone.com/theduck, and there's a whole world of information on our website, Jason. You know, I'm -- actually, we're trying to go in the running for an award this year just on our website, you know, how well actually it's actually built, maintained, and the actual team. And we have, like, 30 people who work on our website continuously. So we definitely always have up-to-date content. As a matter of fact, we're on our website now, you know, the folks who do our website; they've actually put this radio show or on all the radio showed on our website. It's under about us right no. There was actually going to be a link on it so you'll actually be able to listen to some of the shows that you've missed. You just have to go on, you know, dryzone.com/theduck to investigate it a little bit further. So, Jason, like, right before the break I would like to talk to you about what we're going to talk the folks about next if that's okay. So that way they can get, you know, some pens and papers ready and everything to right down some notes. And then we're going to talk about some of other products, you know, whether it's clean space or for the different foundation products. And really, why are they worth the investment because, you know, we're going to be a little bit expensive than Chuck in the truck. And why is that and how can we justify the expense and why homeowners need to justify that expense in their head because it's not a 20 dollar solution. I've had homeowners that have told me that other companies have actually asked to have the payment made in the other company's personal name, you know. I mean I was floored when I heard that. When you hear that, that is just a credibility issue. But once again, folks, like I said we're getting ready go on a break here. So we'll see you in just a second.

Bill Anderson: All right, well, Jason we are back. You can contact us through dryzone.com/theduck, and we promised that we're going to talk about clean space. We talked about what clean space was before. But why is it better than the stuff the people buy online?

Jason Harmon: Our clean space is a product that has been developed especially for crawl spaces. Unlike a lot of other products, it's much heavier. Its 20 miles in thickness. It's made up of seven plies of material and it's reinforced. This product is almost like the line of a swimming pool. It is a very heavy material. And it's heavy for a reason. Because once we put this in your crawl space, we're going to guarantee it for 25 years. Hey, that's a lifetime guarantee according to a lot of states. And this clean space material is put down on in your crawl space and it comes in rolls. And where these laps are -- because one roll is not sufficiently wide enough to cover your entire crawl space -- so where they lap, we have a special tape which seals the seam together and it's carried across to your crawl space walls and actually up the walls to within three inches of the top of your block. And, Billy, you want to pick up and tell us a little bit about the microbial layer that's in this material?

Bill Anderson: Yeah, what it is that's called actually ultra-fresh. Now ultra-fresh is what we actually put in our automobiles. So in our cars during the summertime we've seen our dashboards sweat, right. We turn on the air conditioner, it's superhot outside, and the whole dashboard just gets condensation all over it. And once again, if you have an organic material, which is dust, and you have water, there's moisture in the air, set perfect storm that everybody talks about as far as mold. So this ultra-fresh that we have in our cars actually stops the mold and the mildews from growing inside our cars; exact same stuff that they build right into clean space. There are UV materials that are built into the clean space. And a lot of times folks have asked, well, who really cares about UV protection in a crawl space coz it, are dark? Well, when you talk about how protective we really are of everything that we do and why it makes sense and why it's worth the investment is that, when this things are manufactured in the light, it's stored in the light, it's transported to my shop, that's in the light. We take it a person's house and, you know, we have to unroll it outside so the light's constantly affecting it. So when we put it in your crawl space, this liner was protected from birth, so there's no degradation of this stuff when we put it in there. Like Jason said earlier, you know, we talked about the acids in the soil. And that acid is what makes a lot of the plastic brittle. Well, it just doesn't happen with clean space. It's like saying, okay, you know what, I can put a tarp on my roof, no, [inaudible] [0:17:36] for a while, but, eventually, it's just going to break that. We put shingles on our roof for a reason. If that's true then we should be putting clean space in our house for a reason. It has the guarantee, it has the warranty. And that means that, basically, the company that installed it has been trained. We are the largest water proofer on the shore. We've been doing this for a very long time and there's nobody -- and I can prove that we're the largest water proofer on the shore [inaudible] [0:18:00] down with you and also down with the other contractor. And I can prove that we're larger than they are and not just larger because we're larger and we do more homes, but we're larger because we're better. And I can show you every one of my guy's trainings, you know. You go to Wal-Mart you see all these little certificates on the wall when you have your oil done, well, you know, it I appreciate that as a consumer because, if you went to Bob's garage down the road, and Bob may do a very good job but it's normally what happens is, if Bob does a good job, his son not so much. His son does very little, right. I mean, that's the reason why business has normally failed especially long businesses. You know, how many times have we said, oh, when the old man had the company, it was great. Well, when my little girl hopefully takes over our company when I'm ready to retire, I don't want to see that quality suffer and that's the reason why we train. And, you know, my daughter who is 11 years old, we -- she understands how to fix crawl space at 11. It's funny cause she's the 11 year little girl I know that [inaudible] [0:18:52] crawl space. You know, normally, like, ew ew, it's gross. But you know, she -- other than spiders, she's got crawl space [inaudible] [0:18:59] basements down, Jason, it's funny watching her down there.

Jason Harmon: We're going to hit a few other products and our time is limited today, so we better get moving along. We have another product line called TBF. And TBF stand for Total Basement Finishing products. Wow, I was really amazed the first time I saw these products. You know, we've been used to seeing basements that are finished with wood studs and sheetrock and wood moldings. The product line that we have is made out of totally inorganic material, and inorganic material will not support mold or mildew like wood and sheetrock will. And these products have specifically design for below grade use. We have wall panels, we have moldings, and we have ceiling tiles, floor coverings. And would you believe that the wall panels are guaranteed for 50 years.

Bill Anderson: I know we said it before but, John, the gentleman who does a lot of our home shows; this guy is 19 years old. And by the time he's 50 -- oh, I'm sorry, about the time he's 70, that's when the warrantees end. I hope to be alive when my warrantees end right now. Coz, you know, I'll be 87 years old when the warrantee that we install right now, and, you know, so it's going to be up to my daughter, hopefully, I'm assuming by then -- I'm hoping I'm still not running our company at 87, to make sure that, you know, these all these warranties are still impact and everything. We had Burton here a few weeks back and he definitely spearheads our TBF Division. It's amazing watching these go up. We had a house going on down in up near Wilmington and the homeowner we walked in, it was like two and a half weeks later, and [inaudible] [0:20:37] this wasn't a great big weird house. It was like 1200 square feet. It was one big room plus a bathroom. We were done in, like, two and a half weeks. And it was amazing that walls wrap force wrap the bathroom was in, you know, everything was done, HBAC, everything. These folks were living in it before Christmas. How wow, is that. We started the job right there, after Thanksgiving and these people were moved in and we had our CO before Christmas. What a great Christmas present for somebody, Jason. It all struck me sometimes what our guys are able to do in such a short time. And these products that we use, like Jason said, they're designed to be down there. How heart wrenching would it be if you spent 20/30/40/50/70/80,000 on a basement and it rains next week, it rains hard next week, and then we get snow and -- we're going to say that dreaded four letter word, snow, right. How disheartening can it be to see it a foot of water down in the basement and then you see mold growing on the sheetrock. It's not even just a sheetrock because, you know, you have these companies that command and they try to dry up your home in an emergency. And, Jason, what do they normally remove?

Jason Harmon: They're removing the sheetrock at least two feet up and they have to put fans in and to dry it out and they have to spray the areas. But, you know, with the products that we're selling, don't have to worry about that. They're impervious to water. Water is not going to hurt them. You can dry up that basement, not have to worry about treating any of it for mold or mildew.

Bill Anderson: Sad part is, is they're taking off two feet of the sheetrock. What are they doing with the wood? Last time I checked wood was just as organic as paper. Let's face it that's part of paper. They're leaving the wood behind and they're saying, well, your wood would be fine but these papers got to go. Because that's the easiest thing to remove, right? Nobody wants to -- if you have to take down your sheetrock and then you had to take down the wood, nobody wants to do that, right. Everybody's like, uh, well, I don't know. So they do the easiest thing they can. They say, well, let's dry it up the best we can and we're going to put some fans down here. Well, really, what do fans do, Jason? It just moves wet air anyway. There are some companies out there that are fairly sophisticated, and, you know, there are some [inaudible] [0:22:27] out there, especially the one in Georgetown that I really like. They at least go in there and they try to tackle that project right. And I hate when I walk in there and they're like, well, how come you got to take out the studs, coz we actually have to take out the studs to put in our -- I hate the word French drain -- but our French drains, you know, our water guard. We talk to them about putting back our ever last wall restoration system, which, you know, normally, when it floods and you don't have the budget to go ahead and fully TBF this thing off, we can go in there and put 32 inch walls in that are still totally inorganic. So even if it does flood again, the things that are down there still aren't going to get ruined if you use, you know, everything 32 inches down is inorganic. So, you know, it's still stud, it's the TBF walls, it's, you know, our different floorings that we use and so, at least, if you do have an emergency, everything is not going to at least, get ruined. Jason, how many times -- I mean, it's been raining and snowing. Every time it rains, seems like the office, the girls in the office go into panic mode because all -- and I think we have like 50 some lines coming into the office. I quit paying attention to those reports, but I think we have, like, 50 lines that'll come to the office and they all just line up at once, you know. They're scrambling trying to get all of our designers out there. It's amazing how many people have this issue. Seems like a very [inaudible] [0:23:41] about it, Jason? I know last summer, you know, some of the TV stations they have some channels on when we really had the floods. They'd have a couple, you know, streets that were really bad or whatever, but it's amazing how many of us are in the same boat. I mean, boat literal -- and I mean it, the pun, by the way, so pun intended. You know, how many of us are in the same boat with all these water that's coming into our basement? Everybody just -- they just shake their head, you know, what do l I do.

Jason Harmon: Folks, if you're thinking about finishing your basement that's unfinished at the present time, give us a call first. Let us come over and show you how to waterproof it and also show you our TBF products. It will be well worth your time to let us introduce you to these products because, as Bill says, they're inorganic, water's not going to hurt them. And let's say that you finished your basement with standard or wood studs at the sheetrock and you had a water issue and the sheetrock had to be removed, the studs had to be removed and then be replaced, you probably spent enough money right there to put our waterproofing system in your basement, let alone the TBF products that are made out of inorganic materials.

Bill Anderson: We don't normally just do it once. When we have a problem, we don't fix the wood on your roof if you have a leaky roof, right. You know, just take off the shingles, put the roof in or the, you know, the wooden sheeting in and then put the same shingles back, I mean, that just wouldn't make any sense. Well, that's, you know, that's kind of what you're doing when you've come in there and repair the damage in a leaky basement. Corrugated pipe has [inaudible] [0:25:02]. It's not a waterproofing system. It's what we use in the roads. It's how we get our gutters away from our house when, you know, we wanted above grade. It's not what you use to waterproof your basements. I can't stress enough that there's some engineering behind our products, whether it's all these all things or, we have a couple more minutes of this morning, you know, about our foundation product. Everything we use with our foundation products is engineered, you know, whether it's our helical piles, which basically is like a great big screw that we screw into the ground and we use to help hold lighter structure up like a chimney, coz chimneys all the time fall off their -- off the houses a little bit and we just keep cocking it up and cocking it up, cocking it up, until it falls down or we replace it or we use our push peers when, you know, we have this great big cracks in our foundation. It doesn't need to be a big crack. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, but doesn't need to be a big crack for it to be a problem, you know. It's just we wait until it's a big crack before we do something.

Jason Harmon: That's correct, Bill. People need to address these foundation issues before they become a big problem. And, you know, there's a number of things that a homeowner can keep an eye out on. One of the things is evidence of cracking in your foundation. And if you have a basement, keep an eye out for horizontal cracks, vertical cracks, and stair step cracks, because these can all be an issue or a sign that you've got a foundation issue. Another thing is sticking doors and sticking windows in your living area. This could be a sign that you have some settlement issues in your foundation. And we can correct this and it's best to correct them before they become a big problem because then it's more costly to correct them.

Bill Anderson: You know, Jason, one of the biggest problems I've seen lately and I had just a homeowner named David, he's down Louis, we do this crawl space and he said, Billy, [inaudible] [0:26:43] you were kind of talking to me and he said I actually asked your guys. I planned on putting some granite countertops in. What's this going to do to the structure of my house? Then I'm like, you know, well, David, listen, you got to understand your house was never designed to carry the load of a granite countertop. It wasn't. I mean, it was designed to carry the light load that it has, not a whole bunch of extra weight. So, [inaudible] [0:27:01] what do we do? And, you know, we pulled out our load calculator and we came up with a very inexpensive solution form. You know, I mean, at the end of the day it was cheaper than a countertop was because we did it beforehand, we thought about it, you know, we fixed it before it became an issue. So, you know, if we can live you with anything today is fix it while it's small because it costs a lot when it's big. Doesn't cost a lot to fix a little teeny tiny thing, but it just -- it takes a whole lot of money to fix a really bad problem. So, well, Jason, this clock on the wall is telling me we're about ready to get out of here. So why don't we give out some numbers and let these folks know how to get a hold of us .

Jason Harmon: Okay, Bill, well it's good to have been in here with you again today, but our listeners can reach us at dryzone.com/theduck, dryzone.com/theduck. Also, you can email Bill at bill@dryzone.com or Jason@dryzone.com. We look forward to being with you again next week.

Bill Anderson: Well, Jason, like I said, I was [inaudible] [0:28:13] to be in here coz I -- I don't know how I do it without you. So once again I do appreciate it. And, folks, we appreciate you listened in. [Inaudible] [0:28:19] enough and, you know, we will talk to you next week.

Male Speaker: You've been listening to Under Your Home with Dry Zone. DryZone in Milton, Delaware. Your complete source for basement, crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing. 24 hour service. We never sleep at Dry Zone. Contact us online at dryzone.com/theduck.

Our Structural Products we offer for Foundation and Structural Repair

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:57:39 -0400

Bill Anderson: Well, folks, listen. My name is Bill Anderson from Under Your Home with Dry Zone and Jason Harmon actually was feeling a little under weather this morning so Kenny promised me he'd fill in if I needed him to. Kenny, I want to thank you for getting up this early and coming down with me and getting the show done for this folks.

Kenny Sharpless: Thank you.

Bill Anderson: Last week, we were talking about things you should ask you contractor. I kind of want to switch gears and start talking about some of the different products that we sell and what they actually do coz, you know, you're the production manager, let's talk about what goes in the ground. One of the things we've seen a lot lately is leaning chimneys. Why do they lean, Kenny? Is it the overweighed footing? Is it the small footing?

Kenny Sharpless: I'd just say more likely a combination of, a couple of my guess, soil conditions, the footer may have not had been poured thick enough.

Bill Anderson: Exactly, right.

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, may not have been tied to the house properly. There are a number of different things that could have caused it.

Bill Anderson: What do we normally use to fix that? Because most -- I think the normal practice of fixing that is you just rip it out--Kenny Sharpless: Rip it out and start over.

Bill Anderson: Right? Yeah. And if it's the soil that failed in the first place--Kenny Sharpless: You're probably going to have a failure again.

Bill Anderson: Exactly. So you're spending all that money like over and over and over and over again. So, let's see, what's the definition of insanity? You do things over and over and over again, expecting different results, right?

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah.

Bill Anderson: Why replace chimneys, you know, you shouldn't have to replace one, you know. It’s always pretty much being there with the house.

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, I mean -- especially like when they dig your house, they dig a house, they over dig you house. When they pour that footer or your slab or whatever that concrete, that base that they're putting down, whenever they're putting that in, they didn't re-damp -- you know, they don't re-damp the ground below. So if they dug three feet too dip, they're just going to push some dirt back in it and then they're going to pour your footer over that. Well, over time, you're going to have a void underneath that footer that is weaker than the six foot away from -- you know, the spot six feet away from it. And over time that's what's going to because it is the soil conditioning is weak in underneath of it and it cause a chimney to fall.

Bill Anderson: The first sign that you normally see is up by the roofline.

Kenny Sharpless: We had a house; I believe it's at Hockessin, Delaware. The house, two story house, chimney right at the top pick was out about inch and a half.

Bill Anderson: It was kind of scary. I mean that thing was leaning.

Kenny Sharpless: And then what we'd used on that gentleman's house was actually helicals. Put two helicals underground.

Bill Anderson: Helical piers are basically like its great big screw, okay, so we take an excavator and we have a screw driver on the top of it, right, where the -- normally where the bucket goes. And we start advancing the screw into the ground. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to reach some competent oils. Because, like, if you have a long screw and you're trying to screw into a big old log, halfway through it, it’s going to just basically stop, right?

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, you're going to start hitting resistance.

Bill Anderson: Exactly, so I mean, that's kind of layman's terms. I mean, that's really what we're looking for. We're looking out for a resistance on our gauges on the excavators. So the -- you know, the deeper that we go or the more competent soils that we hit, the more pressure it's going to take to embed this thing in the ground. Once we meet sort criteria we stop advancing on the ground. We put a bracket underneath the chimney and you normally do two off them. So I mean, it's a very cost effective solution, you know. The amount to actually replace the chimney was what, three, five thousand dollars easy? This will cost you less than that to do a helical pier, right. Kenny Sharpless: A day job, clean up, there was no, you know, hardly any cleanup.

Bill Anderson: Yeah. I mean we dug a small hole in front of the chimney, drove the things down to the ground. We actually used boards on the ground so the grass didn't even get messed up from our excavators. And it was a quick, easy fix that was permanent. Once we put these brackets underneath the footing, all we do is we simply take another hydraulic pump and we actually squeeze them together which actually lifts or rotate that chimney back into place. When you guys were doing that job, you were just talking about that inch and a half that was t the top close up, right?

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, it was tight.

Bill Anderson: Yeah, I mean, I remember talking --Kenny Sharpless: And I actually climbed up on the roof and checked it.

Bill Anderson: I remember talking to homeowner and he was just, like, Billy, I can't believe it. He was, like, I knew you guys were going to stabilize it, I know you said you'd get it fixed or whatever. He's, like, but I watched this chimney go back into place. He was like, I, you know, he was like I was scared to death it was going to fall over.

Kenny Sharpless: Oh, he told me the whole time we were working, he's like, you know, he said I believe you, man, but I'm real skeptical, I'm real skeptical. And like you said the whole time, I mean, he was right there with me when I was pushing, when I was doing the lift. You know, we always require the homeowner to be there while we're doing it for safety reasons as well as -- you know, we want to make sure that, you know, we're giving them what they want out of the lift.

Bill Anderson: Yeah, I mean, it went back into place. What a great thing at the end of the day. It was less than fixing yet or less than, you know, replacing it. We absolutely fixed it. He has a 25 year warranty that it does not going to happen again. Ask your mason to give you that type of a warranty, right? You know, you're not going to it.

Kenny Sharpless: And most likely, you know, you bring a mason in a chimney and then reinstall a new chimney.

Bill Anderson: Oh, yeah.

Kenny Sharpless: I can tell you many masons I know that are real clean and keep everything tidy. Most of them kind of sling the concrete and the more they mix around as they're doing it, gets everywhere. They leave their block lying around, leave their, you know, brick lying around. So, you know, it's not really a clean install with a, you know, mason building a chimney as it would with just us coming here and putting helicals.

Bill Anderson: Yeah, you know, let's face it. The mason isn't going to take brick by brick down. It's going to knock big chunks it off which is going to land in the yard. So you go lawn mow and, like, next year in the spring and the summer and you're going to start hitting little chunks concrete which is going to mess up your blade or break a shaft on your --Kenny Sharpless: Or your window or your house.

Bill Anderson: Window of your house, it's going to kick it up, you know, break windows. So it just doesn't make sense for many points of view. Why spend more money on trying to replace something that could repair for, you know, just a portion of the cost? So, Kenny, how is really a footing made? Coz that's really what the -- our houses, our chimneys, whatever, it's all sitting on top of our -- even we're sitting on top of our feet, right? That's what keeps us stable.

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, I mean, basically just like out feet. If our legs ended at our ankles we'd probably be unstable, we'd be toppling over a little bit, you know, we'd have trouble, you know, standing up straight because our foot extends outward that gives us that stability. Same thing with footer foundation of our house, you know, and like I said before, when, you know, when they dig it, they don't always dig it that, you know, they need three foot. They're digging three foot perfectly all the way around. You're going to get three foot six, you're going to four foot, you're going to in depths. When they go to do that footer, they're going to knock it down because that footer is supposed to be level with the top.

Bill Anderson: Yes, so they're not going to pour extra concrete coz we know that cost an extra money --Kenny Sharpless: So they're just going to go with the dirt that's already there. And, like I said, at that point, you know, like, if you take a plastic bag or a paper bag, you fill it up with air, it's going to hold, you know, when you push on it. You take it and just crumple it up, there's nothing there. Same thing with the footer with the sand, you know, if they dig a hole and they just put dirt in it and then put something over top of it, how long is it going to talk for that dirt just to complete disappear?

Bill Anderson: You know, it's funny, because there's a thing on a potato chip bag that actually said the contents will settle during shipment, right? So it's kind of the same analogy, right? You know, I mean, once they pour the concrete, the dirt underneath it, eventually, is going to start compacting which makes your footer basically got to go catty waspish [phonetics]. you know, it's going to go out a whack and when it starts doing that, if your footer breaks, your walls are going to break and then you can start having big foundation issue so. Kenny Sharpless: But then you get, you know, like, a lot of builders have put sump pumps in the corner of a basement, you know, right in the corner. That seems to be an issue that caused some problems with the foundation drop. And --Bill Anderson: I never figured out why they will put a round sump pump in the corner. As water goes through the sump pump it's going to bring some silt and sand and everything else with it. Where do you think that sand and silt is coming from? Coming from underneath your footer, right?

Kenny Sharpless: Around the sump crack, around the footer, around the outside foundation.

Bill Anderson: So, I mean, without really getting too technical, you know, the long part of a wall, the middle part of a long wall has a spanning capability. It's like a bridge.

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah.

Bill Anderson: So you can have dirt on both sides of a bridge and the middle could be completely empty and you can still go across it because it has a spanning capability. If you had a bridge that went out into the water; made right hand turn, and came back to the shore, if there's not any peering underneath it, if there's nothing to hold that up, it's going to fall down. Does that made sense?

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah.

Bill Anderson: I just never understood why they do that, you know. And I know it's because it's in a corner, it's out of the way, and we’ll just put it here, right, for lack of better places. So there's no really even thought of the other trades that come in.

Kenny Sharpless: Generally, you're not thinking of the next guy in line. Most of them are thinking, okay, what's my job, what kind -- okay, I got to go, see you, and then move --.Bill Anderson: They're looking for the next job. Kenny Sharpless: Yes.

Bill Anderson: Exactly. So they dig this great big hole, they dig the hole larger than the house. Let's for giggles just say that they actually were able to scrape it nice and straight. So they scrape it nice and straight, I've never -- and, you know, you've been in construction just as long as I have, Kenny. I've never seen anybody take like one of those whacker tampers --Kenny Sharpless: Yeah.

Bill Anderson: And actually tamp a footing down or put any gravel underneath the footing or --Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, they actually made a vibrating tool that, like, for the walls that you would stick down and, you know, poured wall or in a footer, you know, and basically, it just -- it vibrates the concrete so that, you know, any air packets, you know, any kind of packet that you might have in that concrete mix would then disappear with a, you know, the vibration of the concrete. I can also say I don't see many people do that.

Bill Anderson: Well, I'm talking about even just the dirt underneath the footing itself. When they build roads, you see the great big steamrollers out there. Almost we don't realize, but those things are actually filled with water and they're vibrating and they're doing that to keep it nice and compacted. So if you can compact the dirt even underneath the footing and maybe use some engineered fill and compact that, you're going to have a sturdier of a base. And like you said, when they're actually putting the concrete in the forms and everything, there should be some type of vibration going on so there's no void. We dig this hole in the ground, we pour the footing, and like yours for, what, a day, a week, a month, I guess it kind of depends on the mason.

Kenny Sharpless: It depends on the -- more of the weather condition I'd say, you know, I'd say more, you know, the weather condition. Probably within a week you probably set up to pour walls on it.

Bill Anderson: You know, I remember, when I was kid; I remember watching masons pour antifreeze in the concrete when it's really cold outside.

Kenny Sharpless: So it wouldn't set.

Bill Anderson: So it wouldn't set up, and so it wouldn't freeze and everything else. So, okay, so we got the footing done, we come in, and we pour the walls. Hopefully, we vibrated it down. Odds are there's no -- and I hate the term French drain -- but no French drain around the foundation on the outside. You might get lucky sometimes if there's one on the inside. And they'll just, you know, slap some tar or something on the basement wall, right? In crawl space, at least in County, it's not even a code to actually tar up the walls, you know, even in a crawl space. Even though crawl spaces are built into the ground a little bit, there's no type of waterproofing done, so we get all that done and then we just simply -- we backfill it. And, normally, that's when that whacker tool comes in as you'll actually see them start to vibrate down the dirt a little bit so you don't have a great big going to your house right next to your foundation. So they go on the inside and if they do any type of a French strain, they get some corrugated pipe, you know, that black stuff we use to extend our gutters with. We pour bunch of stone around it and then, you know, we try to make that nice and level and we pour floor.

Kenny Sharpless: Which I think more or less what we pour out of basements is the black corrugated pipe.

Bill Anderson: Normally, I mean that's, that's kind of what everybody used to use, you know, until water guard was invented so. And we still -- I mean, I see brand new corrugated pipe go into the ground. I mean, we replace, like, year old systems. They were just corrugated pipe that were just completely clogged mud. There's no type of filtration with it, there's no way to clean it, and the sad part is, is around the corner of a basement, what do you normally see? What is it normally? What kind of condition is it normally in?

Kenny Sharpless: It's a 90.Bill Anderson: It's a 90s, but they're normally taking a 90 and they're normally sticking their knee in it to make them 90, right? They're not actually cutting it off buying a 90, screwing it on.

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, with the corrugated pipe they just bend it and make it work.

Bill Anderson: Yeah. So, I mean, you know, you have a four inch pipe that, you know, you bend it in half and you're lucky if you're getting a couple inches of actual usable area.

Kenny Sharpless: Now, you got a one by six areas that you might be getting some waters or--Bill Anderson: Exactly.

Kenny Sharpless: If mud hasn't clogged it up.

Bill Anderson: Exactly.

Kenny Sharpless: You know, with our system, like, you know, whether it's water guard, or whether it's the hydro link, you know, both of our systems we put cleans outs in them whether it's in a basement or whether it's in a crawl space. We have clean outside all our systems. And that goes back to us being preventive as well as proactive. We can't control what the sediment, you know, the soil conditions and the sediment is. One house we might, you know, might not get any, you know, any soil or any sand in the pipes or the sump, one house we might. So while putting those clean outs, it gives us the opportunity that if that were a house that had, you know, sediment issue, that we could put a hose in our plush out line out. Now, the homeowner still has a brand new system from a year ago that we installed.

Bill Anderson: So, Kenny, our producer is telling us we need to actually take a break here for a few seconds, so when we come back, we're going to talk some more about the way houses are made and some of the different products that we're using, why that may or may not be the best depending on what you do. Visit us on the web it's www.dryzone.com/thedock. All right, Kenny, looks like we're back on the air. We were talking a few minutes ago about the footing and how it's made and everything else. Well, you know, now we're starting to get into an engineer type of world, right? And I like engineering because for the most part at least somebody is trying to figure out the right solutions. So there are these new beams that came out and, I mean, it's not really new now but, you know, LBL Beams came out, you know, how long ago? Ten, 15 years ago, whatever it was, maybe even longer, I don't know. Explain what an LBL beam does.

Kenny Sharpless: Basically, it's wood that's been cut down, re-laminated back together and prospect together to make a structural beam. So instead of having a two by four cut out of a tree, you've actually got this piece of two by four that's been milled down, it's been glued together, laminated together, and pressed to make it become an engineered beam rather than piece of lumber.

Bill Anderson: Yeah, so it's like it's an eight inch strip of wood that they put, like, what, 150 and them together. They start gluing it to all daylights, they compress it all up, they cut it down and everything else, and then there's I think more glue that goes on top of that. They work great; they have a wonderful spanning capability. Problem is, is when you put it into a crawl space that's vented to the outside where you have definitely the humid air coming in there and you start talking about condensation. Condensation gets on it then it can actually start delaminate and I think it's actually going to weaken the spanning capability of it. So, all these different layers that these thing's made out of, starts to come apart, you know, it's like oriented [inaudible] board which some people call it flake board or it's like the cheaper version of plywood. So it's all this little teeny tiny flakes of wood that they just kind of put them all in a row, they put a whole bunch of glue in it, and they compress it. And then they cut it in like, what, four by and that's what we used for the outside sheeting of our house.

Kenny Sharpless: OSB, basic OSB sheeting, yeah.

Bill Anderson: Yeah, you know, and that's what we use for, like, our roofs and everything else. So if you go into your attic and you see all these little teeny tiny chips of wood, that's oriented strand board. And once again, if that gets wet, it's going to delaminate and it starts to weaken and it starts to swell and it starts to warp and everything else. So what they're doing now from the LBL beam, somebody said, you know, listen, let's make a stronger trust or stronger joist and they'll take this little piece of wood, what is it, like, a one by two strip, something like that. They'll put one on the top and one on the bottom and they put this strip of OSB, this Oriented Strand Board right to the middle. So it kind of looks like a wooden I-beam. They definitely have a spanning capability. Good piece of material to use in the house except for, once again, especially in a crawl space, if you let that moisture come in, it could actually weaken the Oriented Strand Board --Kenny Sharpless: timing, you know, the moisture is going to collect on the, you know, the webbing of it, every time the other webbing is going to start to rut out, you can get your mold growing on it. Give it time right now, eventually, those two cords on the top are just going to start meeting each other.

Bill Anderson: Yeah, you know, I mean, it's -- I don't want to use the word -- but I mean it's kind of like cancer for you home. It's something that could be preventable though. You know, I mean, it's absolutely an easily solvable issue to keep that joist or that LBL, that [inaudible] [0:15:33] that they use in pristine shape. It's kind of like when you take -- when people have, like, spill girders. Normally, they paint them black or whatever in a lot of homes. When you first buy it, it looks all beautiful. Well, it starts getting all these reds and oranges on it which, you know, is rust so --Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, it's the oxidation and the rust.

Bill Anderson: It's the oxidation, exactly. So we start talking about this. My house actually have I-beams underneath it and the paint on it is still as nice and pretty as the day it was when it was made because we protect this I-beam, this main backbone of our house from ever getting that type or oxidation on it, or like I said, if you have the wooden ones, you know, you got to stop that moisture from getting on their coz you don't want the wood ruts. Wood rut is not good when it comes to wood. I mean, it just weakens the wood, it eats it, and it’s just as bad as termites. Kenny Sharpless: Like you said, it's just like cancer.

Bill Anderson: Exactly, you know. I mean, it is. It's a cancer of the wood. That's preventable. I've also seen the new trust systems. Looks just like a regular trust so they, you know, I don't know how wide they are. I guess it's maybe a foot or two apart. And they actually start having these different pieces of wood coming off at an angle so it looks like a trust. And the only issue I've ever seen with them, and they make it out of real wood which is nice, and they have and there are a couple good trust companies around here. I just feel that there are a lot of homes where there -- since they are stronger, you know, I think some contractors are trying to overspun them a little bit. And it's still within their tolerance but how many homes have you been out to, Kenny, that, you know, the house is gorgeous, beautiful house like right down the beach like, you know, millions of millions of dollars or whatever.

Kenny Sharpless: Less than five years old?

Bill Anderson: Less than five years old, and the homeowners have always been complaining to the contractors, like, floors are bouncy, you know, it's a brand new house my floor shouldn't bounce, you know. And we go underneath there and we'll see -- coz, normally, you're talking, like, with a span of about 14 feet, 12, 14 feet in between, you know, the wall and the wall and the whatever, right? I've seen these things as much as what, like, 20 some feet, right? I mean, it's quite a long span. So we've had to go underneath their smart jacks and, you know, we've cut that distance in half to stop the force from mounting, you know. And all of a sudden they're just, like, we tried all these different solutions, the contractor has, you know, and it just never seem to work and, you know, we heard you guys on the radio, we saw you on TV, you know, we saw you in the papers or, you know, we're kind of everywhere in our company. So, when they get us out there and we can actually stop that, we actually start making believers of contractors and different property management companies. And the older my company gets, the more property management companies start asking us to come talk to them and do work for them because it used to be just the cheapest better work. Now, they're sitting down the same -- well, you know, maybe that's not the best way to do it because -- these homeowners associates are paying for a lot of this stuff. So, you know, they're like, listen; if we're going to have to assess our homeowners, but just the one time. Let's make sure that whatever solution we use, that's right, so more and more and more we get brought in on these, you know, on these larger commercial projects. And the biggest thing with that is we're still giving you the same service if you're just one homeowner. If you give me a-- or a housing development that has, like, 150 home or 50 homes or 30 homes or whatever the case may be, you know, this kind of units we still treat each an individual homeowner, like they're each individual homeowner. And, you know, I just don't think you can buy that kind of service anywhere, you know, because you can get ordinary service anywhere. How many times have we went somewhere where the service was, like, it was all right, you know, it wasn't great, it wasn't good, it just they did what they said they were going to do. That is such a bad referral and I don't why we've ever thought that that was okay to accept it from. Like this radio station is one of the best radio stations I've ever doubt with and not because, you know, we do half hour shows on them, but because their sales people call us every week. And they're like, Billy, listen, how is it going? Not, hey, it's time to pay a check. It's, tell me what's going on, let's talk about what we need to focus in on this week, let's talk about where your business is heading, let's talk about -- they really get to know us. And I can tell you now the, you know, the general manager, Troy, actually understands what we do. The sales people here have always understood what we do. The, you know, the sales manager understands what we do, you know. I mean, I've had conversations with Kristen and, you know, I've had conversations with Troy, I've had conversations sales people, you know, about what we do and they're actually concerned about it, you know, they're concerned that our business is portrayed in a certain way. And, you know, that's why I was really happy when they invited us to do these shows because I've always felt that an informed homeowner makes informed decisions. So I truly appreciate wow service when I receive it, you know. And, like I said, from the station we definitely got it, there’s been a restaurant that we went to two weeks ago for a sales meeting that we went to. And it was a worst service I've ever had. I mean, she did what she said she was going to do. She brought out our food and she brought it out timely. And she kind of filled our glasses for the most part. But it was just, like, here's your food, here's this, give me some money, have a nice day, it was over with, you know. It wasn't really memorable. So the sad part is, is we're probably never going to go back there as a sales team and we can actually blow a few hundred dollars that night and, you know, we would -- you know, we still gave her a decent tip but she would have gotten much, much bigger tip. There's just nothing wrong with outstanding service, you know. I think we should expect that for every single thing we do. Kenny, how can we prevent all of those things that we just talked about? I know we only have a few minutes left here this morning. How do we stop all that cancer and how do we make sure that our house is dry, because, really, at the end of the day right now, we're getting into the humid season now, you know. It's going to start getting the hotter it gets, the more humid it gets, the more this crawl space issues come to folks.

Kenny Sharpless: First of, you know; obviously, get us out there to do an inspection. You said informed homeowners make informed decisions. I mean, Billy, you know, I own my own home and until I start working here at Dry Zone there's stuff that's under my house that, you know, even as a builder, that I wasn't, you know, like, the mold issues and -- you know, there's certain issues that I wouldn't have been aware of as a homeowner or even as a builder.

Bill Anderson: You know something, Kenny, and I don't mean to interrupt you, but here's something a lot of folks need to understand about mold, coz everybody likes to throw that four letter word around, right. If somebody says you got mold in your home, you're going to spend ten, 20 grand, it doesn't matter coz they're going to say, oh, your kids are going to die if you don't care of this. And there's actually a law now that says that if you diagnose mold, you're not allowed to treat it. And I think that's absolutely wonderful. There's an industrial hygienist that we've been trying to work our schedules out that she could come down and actually talk to you folks about really what this law means and why it's important because I just -- I think we've all had the horror stories of somebody goes underneath your home and they say you have all these issues and you're freaked out sufficiently enough to spend all that kind of money, and you may have never had it in the first place. So with us, if the homeowner actually does feel that there is mold down there, we get the industrial hygienist in there to say, okay, you know, this is what it is. She actually writes up an action plan saying this is how you're supposed to treat it. She's an expert. I don't want to get into the mold diagnosis game coz there's a lot of schooling it takes. There's a lot of knowledge you have to have to write these different action plans and everything else. So, like I said, I don't mean to interrupt what you're talking about, but there is law out there, so if they try to diagnose it, they cannot treat it. It is absolutely against the law. So, anyway, Kenny you were talking about your house.

Kenny Sharpless: Yeah, I was just saying that, you know working at Dry Zone has helped me better understand what could potentially be underneath my house. So that's basically what I was saying.

Bill Anderson: When -- coz, really, I mean, whoever thinks about that space, right? It's not part of your home, nobody thinks about it, it's -- people just stick their head in the sand about it, right? If I can't see it, it doesn't happen. So, like, at home shows, its funny coz we'll have homeowners, at least to show, like, the before and the after’s, right? And we stopped showing the after's -- or, I'm sorry, the before, because everybody would walk by our booth and say, oh, you know, oh, I'm so glad my crawl space doesn't look that bad. And I'm, like, well I was at your house last week and this is your house. You know, we make a joke about it, but who really hangs -- I mean there's a few people that definitely they're in their crawl space, right? But for the most part, who -- I never did it before we got into this business. I mean, it was -- my dad, when we moved here from Colorado, he was told that all we had to do is open our vents in the summertime, close them in the wintertime, and everything is good. And overtime, I asked my dad, you know, why he did that. I mean, we're from Colorado we never had crawl spaces. We had basements. And he was, like, well, Billy, your uncle Bill said that's what I was supposed to do. He's, like, I don't know any better. I just, you know, I did what I was told to do by my brother. Who's not going to believe they're brother, right? So I'd ask him, my uncle Bill, you know, I was, like, so why did you tell my dad that. And he was, like, well, Billy, that's what my neighbor said when I moved down here, you know. And the sad part is his neighbor probably told him that and his dad told him this and his brother-in-law told him that, right? Coz let's face it, you know, we all have that member of our family that, you know, like the idiot son-in-laws, right, or the idiot brother-in-laws or the idiot sister-in-laws or whatever. You know, we all have somebody in our family that thinks they know everything and they give you the best advice and you believe them because that sort of make sense. Yeah, open up the vents, air comes in there, and dries up the space. So I always preface that question with a homeowner with my question, which is, how can you keep something dry, with what air? If hot air truly rises in your crawl space or in your house, the air that's coming in there from the outside is rising up into our attic and that's why our attics are like a thousand degrees. So if that's true, then that means the cold air is going down into the crawl space. Hot and cold air make rain or makes condensation. So if you take a soda or glass of ice tea or, you know, whatever out of your refrigerator, you know, you didn’t have condensation on it inside the refrigerator, but you took it out and all of a sudden it starts you know, "sweating". And all that is, is that the warm air is surrounding that cold can or that cold glass and you have temperature variants and the cold air has basically taken a lot of that moisture out of the atmosphere and it's condensing it. Kind of like air conditioners, you know, the air conditioners definitely remove some of the moisture in the air and that's why you have that little clear to about size of house that spits all that water out. So, well, folks, I tell you what, our producer is telling us we are out of time. That was a quick show this morning, Kenny. So once again I appreciate you doing it with me and I'm hoping Jason will be back. He's -- I know he's been under the weather this morning. So I'm hoping he's back. If not, I'm going to stay with you probably one more time to do another show. You can reach us on the web www.dryzone.come/thedock. Thank you very much. Kenny, I appreciate it.

Kenny Sharpless: Thank you.

Dispelling Myths about What to do in your DelMarVa Crawl Space

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:50:22 -0400

Bill Anderson: Well good morning folks, this is Bill Anderson with Under Your Home with DryZone. And it's been a few weeks but Jason's actually joining me again.

Jason Harmon: It's good to be back on radio again with you.

Bill Anderson: Listen folks, when Jason was here last time we started to talk about crawl spaces. And now that we're really back into the season, the crawl space stuff really starts happening, I kind of wanted to really talk about some myths, kind of dispel some things that we've heard over the years - "This is what my dad told me" and "This is what my brother told me" and "This is what my brother-in-law told me" and this is what whoever told you because everybody has opinions. So Jason, I'm not a native; actually I don't know if you are or not.

Jason Harmon: I'm a native eastern shore man.

Bill Anderson: Okay. I was born away from here so when we moved here when I was a kid I was 12 or 13 years old. My dad always opened or closed our vents in the summer time. We didn't know any better, that's just what my Uncle Bill told him to do and the first house I had that's what I did. It kills me because that's a long time of opening these vents, closing these vents and there was absolutely zero thought put into it other than the fact that my dad was told by my Uncle Bill to open up the vents in the summer time and close them in the winter time and there was really no rhyme or reason - I think he was told by somebody who was told by somebody who was told by somebody. So I kind of really wanted to talk this morning about why we close our vents, what really happens in our crawl space, some of the different products that are happening, that should be happening down in there, and just really try to let folks know where things are happening. Because it's funny - I still get the same questions over and over and over again, Jason, and I've talked to the other sales guys too and it's like "Oh, I thought opening my vents was a good thing."

Jason Harmon: Technology changes and this is one of the things that have changed over the years. Back when construction really became a big thing in the United States, perhaps right after the Second World War, when the housing boom started and houses were being built by the thousands throughout the country - there was thought that the crawl space vents were a good thing --and perhaps at that time they might have been to an extent - but over the years we have found that crawl space vents are really not the best thing for your crawl space. And what is happening is that when you open that crawl space vent in the spring you're letting into your crawl space hot humid air into an area that is cooler than what the areas on the outside and when you have warm that meets cool you have condensation and this is where your problems actually start in a crawl space.

Bill Anderson: Jason, before we really start getting into the meat of thing, I got an email last week and the folks are having a hard time remembering our number because we'll say it a couple of times during the show. So I talked with some people in my office about how we can actually make life easier for everybody on the radio to remember our phone number. You can still reach us at the web at DryZone.com, get a hold of me, Bill Anderson, or just bill@dryzone.com or Jason.harmon@dryzone.com. Any questions you have, if you need us to come out and look at your crawl space, your basement, or your foundation, or whatever you need us to look at those are the numbers you want to start calling on. So anyway Jason we were talking about crawl spaces.

Jason Harmon: Foundation vents and the original purpose of them and how technology has changed over the years - now actual zoning codes or construction codes are changing so that crawl space vents can be 100% eliminated as long as the crawl space is conditioned. And what do we mean by conditioned, Bill?

Bill Anderson: That term kind of gets thrown around a lot, Jason. I tend to get irritated when that subject I guess comes up because I guess tomato-tomato; it's still a little round red fruit. So when you talk about the true definition of a conditioned crawl space somebody could literally just cut a hole in your HVAC duct and throw some 6-ml plastic down on the crawl space. Homeowners that I meet they still ask me, they're like "Billy, isn't cold air supposed to keep things less humid?" It seems valid, right? It its cold it's supposed to be drier because the air conditioner is supposed to really take in some moisture out of the air. It doesn't really happen as much as everybody thinks it does because mold it needs three things to live, right Jason?

Jason Harmon: Correct.

Bill Anderson: It needs mold spore, it needs a food source which is anything organic, and then it needs moisture. If the coldness was removing all of the moisture you wouldn't be able to grow mold in your refrigerator. So what it’s doing is it keeps the cold but there's still going to be a level of humidity in there. This last couple of winters has definitely been one of the wettest that I can remember in a long time. Normally it's so bland dry out there that you're putting lotion on your hands, on your face, your sinuses are cracking, and most people are putting humidifiers in their house. I did this year to at least some extent but not as much. It's just cutting the register in a duct doesn't really solve your problems. What this encapsulation means is that it needs to be isolating the dirt floor and the porous walls of your crawl space. So when we get in there the first thing we have to do is we have to basically prep the area. We'll get in there and we'll clean up the floor and we block those vents so that we can start to put our liners, our clean space liners down there, and that's just not the only thing that has to be done at that point, there are definitely a lot of different things that will happen in a crawl space and some things happen in different stages. We have some owners that say "Listen, let's go ahead and block the vents and try to dehumidify it at first, let's see how that works." Some homeowners that are the last phone call we ever get from them because we've accomplished what they've needed to have done. They've reduced their moisture enough to where they're happy. Some homeowners they need a drier so then we come back and do faze 2 or we just do the entire thing at once. Really no matter how you want to tackle this situation as long as you're on the right path and in the right sequence it's not going to really matter.

Jason Harmon: In essence a truly 100% encapsulated crawl space would be blocking the vents, sealing out air from the outside by sealing between the top of the blocks and the sill plate, installing a good quality heavy reinforced liner to separate the house from the earth, and installing a dehumidifier to control the humidity in the air. Now once this is done then we're accomplishing actually a number of things in your crawl space area. Number one and probably the most important is we're going to be controlling that humidity. And if you do not control the humidity in your crawl space you're looking at a number of potential problems. Bill's already mentioned the mold but you're also looking at the possibility of wood rot and of wood compression. Lumber should not have more than about 14% moisture content to it. We're constantly running into homes where there are floor joists that have moisture contents of 25% or more.

Bill Anderson: I'll tell you what - I don't mean to interrupt you, Jason, but I was talking with Brad the other day and Brad's one of our assistant designers. He was in a house that had 85% moisture content. He's like "Billy, I grabbed the girder, the main supporting beam in the house, and I was able to squeeze it and water was coming out" - that's a huge amount.

Jason Harmon: That's for sure Bill and that's a very, very bad situation. And earlier I mentioned wood compression. Actually we're seeing floor joists with so much moisture in them that where they cross the girder they're actually compressing around the girder. And of course this is not good for your house, it's going to cost settling, and if not corrected right up front you're going to be looking at a huge expense down the road for perhaps replacing floor joists and replacing girders. It becomes very costly when you have to start replacing floor joists. We have seen them recently where you could actually take a pencil and push through the floor joists, they're that rotten, all because the moisture has not been controlled in the crawl space. And this is what we do - and let me emphasize one thing right off the bat: crawl spaces vary in what is required to bring them up to standards. They might require sun pump if there's actually a water issue there. If there's just a moisture issue a dehumidifier along with the clean space encapsulation might be sufficient. So when you call us on the telephone and want to know "Hey, what's it going to cost to do my crawl space?" we can't give you a true answer on the telephone because crawl spaces vary from one to another. This is why we send a professional inspector designer right to your house to do an inspection of your crawl space. And when he's doing that inspection he's also taking pictures. A lot of people have never been under their crawl space so this is why he's taking pictures. Once he is done he's going to come up to your house, he's going to load these pictures onto his computer, and he's going to show you exactly what your problems are and then he's going to design right there with you what's going to be necessary to take care of your issues. And as Bill has already said these can in most cases be done in stages if this is what the homeowner wants.

Bill Anderson: So Jason what are symptoms that you guys are hearing out in the field? I'm willing to bet that there are a lot of folks listening right now that say "Well I've got a crawl space but I think it's pretty good. I'm not sure if anything's bad. I'm not going down there to find out." So what are the symptoms that we're really seeing that homeowners seeing like that seems to be the big issues that they're getting?

Jason Harmon: Right now we're at a point in the year when people are turning on their air conditioning systems and a lot of air conditioning air handlers are located in the crawl space as well as some heating units sometimes. But one of the things I'm hearing right now is "Hey, when my air conditioner kicks on it smells musty."

Bill Anderson: Yes, what does musty mean, Jason? We talk about that all the time and I know we're not supposed to use that four-letter word but let's face it, musty is mold, right?

Jason Harmon: Correct, mold is causing the odor, this is bad, and mold is bad. You might want to call it microbial growth but it's actually mold, and what it's doing and is causing the odor in your crawl space - ducts that are transmitting your cooled air from your air handler are most likely not 100% sealed so they're actually sucking this air into the duct work and it's being distributed throughout your house. A lot of people do not realize that 50% of the air that they're breathing in the living area of their house is coming from their crawl space or their basement if they have a basement. Now a house is like a chimney, it's what we call the stack effect - air is exited out of the vents in your attic and in your gables but that air has to be replaced so the house is drawing air in from leaky windows, leaky doors, and from your crawl space. And a lot of houses that have not been conditioned this air is changing as much as one time every hour. So just think of all the mold spores and the other bad things that are being sucked up from your crawl space and distributed throughout your house. We can take care of that issue for you and as Bill has already said we do the inspections and there is no charge for those inspections.

Bill Anderson: Jason besides the ducts being down there for the most part that's where a lot of the air handlers are so I mean you can ask any HVAC guy; these are not self-contained units so it's going to be sucking air in around the machine itself. And I know a lot of the newer HVAC equipment and it has to exhaust them in return. A lot of them I've seen where it guess it's exhausting, it's either exhausting outside or it's being drawn in from outside but there are normally two holes in the thing and it seems like one of them is always in the crawl space. I don't know why, I don't know if it's laziness or if it's supposed to do that or what, but somewhere along the way you're going to be picking up a lot of that air that's in that crawl space right through the ventilation system and that's the reason why our ducts need to be clean because, like I said, let's face it, if these were self-contained systems once you had air that went into your house and they went right back into that same unit there are filters on it, it wouldn't be probably has as dusty and dirty as it is. Most of the things that we see when we're doing an inspection is we'll go underneath the duct work and you'll just feel that nice cold air blowing right on you and if it's blowing on your it's sucking from somewhere. That's definitely one of the symptoms that we're hearing. I think recently since it's been so moist the last couple of years you were talking about compression of wood earlier and for those of you who don't know how to build - houses are built - right after the break I really want to get that with, I really want to explain that to you because it's amazing what our houses are actually sitting on and it's why it's so bad what we're doing. Folks, we'll be right back.

Bill Anderson: All right, Jason, we are back and we were kind of leaving off with compression of wood and how our houses were built and I said that we were going to kind of talk about how our houses are constructed. So we have our foundation put in and most folks understand how that works. We dig a footing, we lay block, and we dig our piers, the little concrete cones underneath the house. Well on top of that where the actual backbone of our house goes you're never going to get that block 100% level where it's supposed to be. So they take little teeny tiny almost like balls of wood shims and where do you think they put them, Jason?

Jason Harmon: Well they put them between the girder and whatever blocks that they have put in to create the pier to support that girder. One of the other things that we're finding is that in a lot of cases the supporting foundation for these piers has not been dug deep enough. When they get ready to build a house most of the times they scrape off the top soil and maybe dig out a little bit for the crawl space and they've disturbed the virgin earth. And a lot of times when these piers are built the pad that the blocks are set on is not dug down to reach virgin earth again to properly support those piers. The blocks are put on top of the piers and as Bill said they're shimmed because not always do they touch where they're supposed to. Now what happens over the years --Bill Anderson: Well let's stay on that part for a second - it's a shim that's an eighth of an inch wide that our house is sitting on. How much moisture do you think it's going to take to cripple that?

Jason Harmon: Not much.

Bill Anderson: Not much - I mean the sad part is we see that all the time where it's completely caved in and our house is not settled eighth of an inch or quarter of an inch. Well that's okay right there where it happens but when you start going up the cracks start getting bigger so we started seeing doors that are on level and we started seeing that isn’t working and we started seeing these separations in our floors and these humps and everything else and all that's coming from are those nasty little foundation vents that's letting that nice warm humid hot air in there. It's funny, Jason, whenever I get to do inspections anymore, especially a crawl space one, I always talk to the homeowners and we talk about insulation in our floors and they're like "Well I don't know, is it good? I've heard goods and beds; I've heard goods and beds with the vents." Billy, please help me, tell me what's right. I've read your book and I know what it's kind of saying and I get it but it's going against every single thing I've ever learned. It's kind of like the diet that my wife and I are on right now. We're on the Atkins diet. Whoever thought eating greasy bacon and cheese burgers for three meals a day would help you lose weight but it does. So it goes against everything we've been taught like opening the vents and closing the vents. I always kind of tell homeowners basically the same little story every single time. The reason why we have insulation on our floors is because we know our floors are cold in the winter time, right Jason?

Jason Harmon: Correct.

Bill Anderson: So if that's true then we insulate our floors to try to keep out the air. Well why don't we just keep the air on the outside where it belongs in the first place so it doesn't have to come into our crawl space so we have to insulate our floors? If we're going to do anything we insulate our foundation walls and for the most part we don't really need to do that most of the time or most houses don't anyway. So let's just keep - whether it's the hot air in the summer time or the cold air in the winter time or whatever - let's just keep that on the outside where it belongs and we can actually start treating our crawl space like it's part of our house. Does this make sense?

Jason Harmon: Makes a lot of sense, Bill.

Bill Anderson: Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Jason Harmon: Oh, that's okay. Please feel free to interrupt any time. Back to our piers that we were talking about - these piers support the entire weight of the house, thousands and thousands of pounds are on these piers constantly. Every period of time if they're not properly installed they will actually be pushed into the ground. And when this happens as Bill alluded earlier then you're going to have the problems with cracking walls, with doors and windows that do not open and close properly, and possibly sagging floors. You would be surprised what we're seeing. And in not trying to use scare tactics here, I'm really trying to be very, very realistic. We just sold a job recently where the piers had settled, causing the girder to drop which caused the wall between the master bedroom and the adjoining bedroom to be three inches from meeting the floor, in other words the floor dropped away from that wall three inches. We have solutions for fixing this which we will get into a little bit later. But these are issues that are caused by improperly installed piers and also the problem that our water table here on the Delmarva Peninsula has raised in the last number years so our ground and our soils are not as stable as they used to be.

Bill Anderson: Yes, think about it Jason, I mean when - it's still funny, I have a lot of homeowners that will sit down and say "Billy ii think I have an underground spring." I say "Well you live at the beach, how you can have an underground spring?" There's no cavernous material around us, right?" What happens is it rains a lot and the ground gets completely saturated which like Jason said it kind of makes a you can call it a false water table or you can call it a water table, not what the well companies, then the day the ground gets real saturated. And it's just like anything else if something gets super, super saturated it's going to get soft. I don't care if it's pasta, I don't care if it's whatever - the wetter something is, the softer it gets. So we have something that's really super heavy like our house and it's sitting in ground that gets super, super soft. Well it wouldn't be bad if the whole structure went around evenly, it's just that it doesn't. It goes off this side's a little bit heavy over here so it advances into the ground a little bit faster and you start to get cracking and then the middle of the house might be heavier so the piers start pushing down in the ground and you start getting some unleveled floors and some sagging floors. Or like a house that I went to, I guess this was like two weeks ago now, up in Wilmington. That it was a slab porch that was on the back of a house that was sort of on a hill and the ground had gotten so wet that it started eroding from underneath the slab a little bit. They didn't know what to do except for the fact we knew that putting some slab piers in in these posts that we used to basically hold the structure up and then they're going to do kind of like a little retaining wall around it and start compacting dirt so that way the whole structure didn't crack off. It amazes me that when we got into this business, Jason, it was like this whole light bulb. We've always heard that somebody's had like this A-ha moment and an A-ha moment to me is somebody gets it. And when we're normally sitting down with the homeowner it's actually really kind of neat when you have the homeowner and they have their A-ha moment and it's like "Why did they tell us this for so many years? Why did they say it this way? Why did they say it that way?

“I don't want to think anything was malicious; I think it was what it was, this is what they were always told because that's what they were always told, that's the reason why we always used to open vents and close vents when I was a kid - it was because that's what my Uncle Bill told my dad. What other symptoms are we getting, Jason? What are people really complaining about?

Jason Harmon: Well we've got off the subject of the crawl space itself a little bit and gotten into really the construction of the house but let's back up to the crawl space itself. A crawl space harbors a lot of critters that we do not like to have in our house. There are crickets and there are worms and there might be rodents of different kinds in there. But one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is that the dust mite is the number one allergen in the United States. This little dust mite gives a lot of people a lot of grief. We're not actually allergic to the dust mite itself we're allergic to the dust mite's droppings. And a dust mite does not drink water; a dust mite absorbs water through its skin. So if we can control that humidity in the crawl space we're going to be able to eliminate the dust mites in that crawl space. And our goal really is to keep the humidity in that crawl space at 50% or below and this is going to solve a lot of issues for people. The dehumidifier that we recommend for crawl spaces actually has filters in it and the filters and the dehumidifier will remove particles as small as the mold spores that create mold as well as the dust mite droppings. So it's going to improve the quality of the air that's in your crawl space and this air in your crawl space is going to find its way up into your living area also so by improving the quality of the air in the crawl space you're actually going to be improving the quality of the air in your living area of the house also.

Bill Anderson: If you have somebody who's complaining about their allergies and their eyes are watering - I don't really know what the symptoms of allergies are. I know it's eye watering anyway because my daughter actually does get that nowadays but I guess sneezing's one of them and coughing and wheezing and all of those other things. It may or may not be asthma or whatever everybody thinks it is. It might just be the fact that you have more of these things growing in your house than what you should so just a simple call to DryZone. A simple call to us, we're going to send out a pre-mailer that has some information in it, we're going to have one of our certified designers come out, look at your home, they're going to be able to say "Hey, listen, hey may, it is, it isn't" if it is then you know how to take care of it; if it's not then you move on to something else. It may be the allergies too, it may be whatever's in the air outside that's making those things happen but you'll never know until you have it inspected and for heaven's sake if it's a free inspection why not take it. It never hurts to have something looked at. We talk to homeowners all the time in the show about it and they're like "Well, listen I don't think I'm going to do anything for a while so I'll just hold off" and we're like "Why wait?"

Jason Harmon: Bill, you've hit on a really good point there. Most people don't even go into their crawl spaces, they don't know whether they have an issue or not, and really that's what we're here for, we're here to inspect your house and tell you "Yes, you have an issue" or "No, you don't have an issue." We're not going to try to sell you something that you done need. We're not that type of a company.

DryZone is a family-owned company and they pride themselves on their integrity and that's one of the reasons why I work for DryZone - I feel that the integrity here is something that far exceeds the average company. And by checking your crawl space of having it checked by us it will give you an idea of whether or not you have a problem and if you have a problem what is going to be required to solve that problem. I know a lot of people are on a fixed income this time of year, all year actually, and they might have to save up a little bit to do some of these jobs. But you need to look at this from another angle too. At some point in time you will probably be selling your house for one reason or another and a house that has an issue to it of any kind is going to command less of a selling price than a house that is pristine in nature. We just had an example of this. We had some people who are moving from the area for health reasons and they have their house under contract, they had a home inspection done, the home inspector in his report indicated that they had water in their crawl space. Here they are five days away from settlement and they're very concerned. Is this issue going to cause them to lose the sale or what's going to happen? So they called us in, we gave them a price for correcting the issue, the realtors involved agreed that they could escrow the money in settlement so that they could go ahead and settle when planned and make their move and the buyer will have the money to take care of fixing that issue after they get title to the property. So this issue could have been resolved by them long ago if they had just have had the crawl space inspected and maybe at that time corrected the issue and the problem with the home inspector having a negative comment on his report would not have been experienced by the sellers.

Bill Anderson: All right, Jason, I'm sitting here looking at our producers and they're starting to give me that wind-up signal so I'll tell you what - would you like to give out our numbers and our emails and all that good stuff this morning? Jason Harmon: I sure would Bill. You can reach Bill at bill@dryzone.com or myself at Jason@dryzone.com and please feel free to contacts us with any questions that you might have. We look forward to hearing from you.

Bill Anderson: All right folks; listen Jason I think that's just about up so as always I definitely appreciate you doing this with me. We've definitely missed you here the last couple of weeks so we will come back here next week and how does that sound?

Jason Harmon: See you next week, Bill.

Male Speaker: You've been listening to Under Your Home with DryZone. DryZone in Milton, Delaware, your complete source for basement and crawl space waterproofing, foundation repair, and basement finishing; 24-hour service - we never sleep at DryZone, contact us online at DryZone.com\theduck.

What's Happening in your Delmarva Crawl Space and some effective Solutions

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:33:27 -0400

Bill Anderson: This is Bill Anderson and this is Under Your Home at DryZone. Jason Harmon said he was going to join me this morning so Jason I appreciate you being her with me.

Jason Harmon: Thank you, Bill. Good morning.

Bill Anderson: We're going to probably beat this horse until it's dead and dead and dead and dead and dead and dead and dead. I want to talk about crawl spaces again this morning and we're going to hammer down what's happening in our crawl space, why we're getting the phone calls because I think a lot of folks don't know what's going on down there so they don't know what's wrong, they don't know what symptom to look for. So before we start hammering down on it again I want to give out our emails. You can reach me at bill@dryzone.com or Jason@dryzone.com or just flat out DryZone.com. Jason, last week we talked about a lot of things. We went here, we went there, there was a lot of - it's hard to get your head around sometimes because homeowners are like "Listen this is what I've been told and this is what I think and this is what I know." Let's really get kind of specific this morning. True symptoms, the things that I'm hearing out in the field are "Listen, we're getting the musty smells" which I know we hit on last weekend or "My floors are sagging a little bit." One of the bigger signs that you have a moisture problem in your crawl space - hardwood floors - when it's summer time and it's nice and humid outside or even winter time and it's nice and humid outside your hardwood floors start to cup a little bit. It doesn't have to be bad for it to be a problem. I've seen it to where some baseboards have actually popped off the walls. It doesn't have to be that bad, it just has to be bad enough that you're actually looking at your hardwood floors, you see a little bitty peek on the edges, and you see almost like a little teeny tiny valley in the middle - great symptom that something's happening down there. It's not normal that your hardwood guy laid it wrong or all these different things are happening, a lot of times you just have too much moisture in your crawl space. Jason, what are symptoms that you're hearing?

Jason Harmon: Well we're getting comments that are all over the ballpark from people. As you've mentioned already the musty smell, right now this time of year is one of the predominant things we hear but we're also hearing things as you already alluded to, the warping and the cupping of the hardwood floors and the fact that windows are condensing on the inside and this is an indication of moisture definitely but where is that moisture coming from? A lot of it is coming out of the basement and condensing on the inside of the windows. Now this a lot of times is more common in the winter time than it is in the spring and summer but we're seeing it actually year round now because a lot of people rarely open their windows anymore, they get right from heat to air conditioning, so that you have a temperature variance there between the outside and the inside air which is helping to cause this condensation. One of the things that is a deterrent to people actually calling us is I think is the fact that they think it's going to cost too much money to really correct their problem. But in a lot of cases this is not the issue and in the long run by correcting their problems they're going to save money in the long run. Moisture is a big thing and where is this moisture coming from is one of the big questions. There are a number of different places that the moisture can come from. It can be coming from underneath the footing; it can be coming through the crawl space walls. Most of our crawl space walls in this area are concrete block although in some of the newer houses we are finding board walls for crawl spaces also. But a concrete block is porous, water will go through it, air will go through it. A concrete block has cores in it. Water will come through form the outside and collect in these cores and eventually it's going to work its way into the crawl space area and this is one of the sources. Another source is actually hydrostatic pressure. This is pressure underneath the ground pushing the water up through the dirt floor into the crawl space area. We're seeing standing water in some crawl spaces. This can be addressed by us also. So we have the technology and we have the products to address any situation in your crawl space.

Bill Anderson: You said something a little while ago, Jason, about money and that's always definitely on everybody's thoughts nowadays with gas being at $4 a gallon or whatever. I was at a church the other day and one of their main goals for having us out there was to reduce their carbon footprint. It's amazing that when you have these things done you should save anywhere between 10% and 20% off your heating and cooling costs by the simple fact alone that it costs a whole lot less to heat and cool dry air than it does wet air. Think about it - you're out there trying to save every nickel you can, what are you spending on your heating and air conditioning costs? For some people that's many, many, many, many thousands of dollars a year. Just by reducing its 10% could be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Especially this church would have to have been - it was a big church so just think how much they'd have to heat and cool the sanctuary and the different halls and everything else that they had adjoined to it so it's not just the house that needs to be taken care of, it's the churches and the buildings and it's kind of everything that we live in we need to maintain. I was going by a couple of houses the other morning, my wife and I were driving to work, and it was in Harvester and I really feel bad because there's this brand new house that nobody's ever lived in and it's just sitting there rotting in the field. I mean it was brand new. It was built as a spec house and it's just sitting there rotting in the field and it's bad how deterioration can happen and for the most part that's the mold that you were talking about earlier, Jason, that's all really wood rot and everything else is, it's mold.

Jason Harmon: Bill I want to digress just a second here because you mentioned something that really put off a light bulb in my head and that was the church. Church, organizations, groups - one of our goals is to educate the general public. In order to do this we'd like to do it in groups if possible. And we have developed programs of different lengths to present to groups at no charge to the group which will explain our crawl space issues and solutions, basement issues and solutions, foundation issues and solutions, and basement finishing issues and solutions. And an educated person is a much more knowledgeable person when it comes to actually deciding whether or not they have a personal issue with their homes. So if you're a member of a group or an organization and would like us to present a program we would be very happy to talk to you about doing this. Just contact Bill or myself at DryZone.

Bill Anderson: Jason, you pretty much have kind of spearheaded that part of our company and I know you've done a ton of them since we started doing them. I know we're definitely off the subject this morning but since you brought it up what actually happens in those things? Kind of walk somebody through it because I don't think we've ever really talked about it on the radio much so kind of walk us through a normal presentation.

Jason Harmon: Well Bill it depends on how long they will give me. And you know me - I like to talk - so I could do up to three hours. But I have developed programs as short as 15 minutes - that is strictly a speaking program, I hand out literature so that they could see what I'm talking about and we just basically hit the tip of the iceberg. I also have a half hour program which is a PowerPoint program and we will bring in the PowerPoint presentation and show you slides of what we're talking about. The next step I have is a one hour program and this really gets into a lot more detail and it introduces the products themselves with their use for, the issues that they're used to correct, and the method that we go through in installing these products. Surprisingly enough and we're not actually doing these to gain business, we're doing these for educational purposes, but surprisingly enough at every program that I have presented so far there has been at least one person in the audience who has either come up to me after the program or called later to make an appointment that has an issue that they needed to be checked out. So give us a call, we'll be extremely happy to make a presentation to your group.

Bill Anderson: It's amazing; I've actually gotten feedback on one of them. When you do these things it truly is - it's one of those things we don't really technically I guess make money on at all, I mean, it definitely costs money because normally you're bringing the coffee and the doughnuts or the bagels or whatever you do. It's definitely being well received. When I had gotten the phone call the other day it was like "Oh, he's such a nice man, he came in here, he wasn't a high pressure sales thing, it was truly an educational type of an event" just to give you some feedbacks, I know I haven't told you yet, but they really said they enjoyed it and they really appreciated you coming down there. There's been some folks that we've been able to help in the meantime because normally we're talking - normally the real estate agents and you'd actually helped make a couple of sales go through just by being able to get out there, relax everybody because everybody's like "Oh, there's mold, I can't buy this house" and you're three days from settlement and somebody, maybe it's your brother-in-law or maybe it's the home inspector or whatever, comes in and says "Oh no, you've got mold everywhere" and you've definitely gone in there and you've been very calming to everybody and saying "Listen, these are your issues" you give everybody the books, they actually start to educate themselves so like I said, Jason, I appreciate you doing it for us because I know I don't have time to do them anymore. I've done a couple but not as many as—nowhere near as many as you have - so that's the kind of feedback you're getting in the field.

Jason Harmon: Thank you, I appreciate the flowers Bill.

Bill Anderson: I know in a couple of minutes here we're going to have to take a break so I kind of want to give out our emails. If you just have some questions it's okay just to email us and say "Hey listen before I set the inspection can you do me a favor? I just have one or two things to make sure that I'm on the right track" and we get those kinds of emails all day long. You can reach me with any questions you want or Jason. My email address is bill@dryzone.com, Jason's is Jason@dryzone.com and our website alone is just DryZone.com. Jason I'll tell you what - let's go and take this break and I'll see you in just a minute.

Bill Anderson: All right, Jason, when we first started this show we talked about symptoms and I know a lot of homeowners - this has been my biggest thing when I talked with folks lately "Billy I didn't know I had a problem. I just thought it was supposed to be that way." We've talked about musty smell and I think I've said it before on here, my mother-in-law hates what I call it, I always call it grandma's house because she told me her house doesn't smell and I'm like "Not you, I mean my grandma" and it didn't smell but it just had that musty it's been closed up smell. The actual reason why you get that musty smell is basically when mold blooms it's kind of sort of like a little flower and when that little flower, for lack of better words, opens up and let's off little more mold spores you're going to get these things called mycotoxins and mycotoxins are, for lack of better words, that musty smell that we get so musty smell basically equals mold. Now eventually here Sue White from Environmental Health Systems, she said she was going to come in and talk with us. We've just had a hard time getting our schedules together, but maybe we'll actually try to get her on the phone, that might make life easier. She can actually test for mold; we don't test for mold at all. If we see something that looks like it we tell folks "Listen, if you want to have it tested by all means do. We can also just spray and get rid of whatever it is" so there's definitely that as a symptom. Cupping at your floors is a symptom - Jason what happens with folks when maybe they might not be getting that musty smell and they've got carpet and linoleum? That's not going to show any really moisture so how can a homeowner tell they have an issue if there are some things that are in the way not really letting them see it? Kind of like a basement wall, you don't know that there's mold all over the back of it because you don't have x-ray vision and our homeowners don't have x-ray vision. What's a homeowner to do? Is there anything that they should be looking for? Is there anything, little things that they should be noticing I guess?

Jason Harmon: There are some things Bill that will probably be noticeable to a lot of people - that would be sticking windows and sticking doors, doors and windows that don't close properly and open properly. There are little things that you can notice around your house. I think earlier you mentioned the hardwood flooring. You can get wood that is swelling, your trim around windows and doors that can swell also. But if a person even suspects they have a problem the first thing they need to do is call us.

Bill Anderson: You're right, Jason, like I said whether you don't know if there's a problem or not why not have it inspected? It's free. It costs you absolutely nothing. We're going to down there for a couple of hours at your house, anywhere between an hour to two hours, and why not take the free book at the very least, and we're down there looking at your crawl space, we're actually taking pictures. It's amazing that we're like the only company I really know that's actually taking pictures while we're working. That's probably one of the biggest compliments, Jason, I get from a homeowner. Everybody else who's ever been out here, whether it's whoever it is, whatever type of company it is, nobody takes pictures. And I've said before that one of my biggest things is trust but verify so when we're trusting, but verifying in my office that means I want to see it because a picture truly is worth a thousand words at the end of the day. We're showing the homeowners the pictures; we're showing them what we see. Because I've been into a lot of homes and they're like "Oh, the bug guy. Oh this company said I have mold up to yin-yang. I mean it's just mold, mold, mold, mold, mold, mold, and mold. Your kids are going to die if you don't get rid of this mold." And we go down there and you don't really see anything and they're like "Well where's the mold they were talking about?" and I'm like I see some discoloration here and I'm color blind so it doesn't really matter to me but trust but verify. When we're done we actually show you the correct sequence in which you have to fix things. And like we've said before on this show and past shows that sometimes homeowners just go with plan A, sometimes they do A and B, and sometimes they do A, B, and C. It's one of those things that we're not in your house to just take every nickel that you have, that's not how we work. So it's about taking care of your house and the sequence it needs to be and what you need to accomplish with it. So you definitely hit the right buttons, Jason, you said window swelling, trims swelling, condensation on the windows - that was a big one, right? I think it was last winter I was at a house and it was like a Saturday afternoon and this was when we started to get like those really good snows that I think shut the roads down. Her sheet rock was condensing. They have a basement but there was so much water that was in their basement, they had like three or four inches or water and they had a great big wood burning stove down there and it was just blazing hot, it was just hot, hot, and hot down there. Really all condensation is the temperature variance with moisture present. So like when it rains if you watch TV in the morning, the weather folks, you're going to see a blue ribbon that comes out of the north and you're going to see a red ribbon that comes out of the south. What happens when those two ribbons meet?

Jason Harmon: You get moisture.

Bill Anderson: You get moisture. And when you're looking at the weather channel or whatever that means rains, at least some type of rain, whether it's frozen rain or rain. So if we can truly eliminate the moisture - and that's the key to everything, Jason, because it slows down on the bugs which to me is another sign that you have a moisture problem because the more moist and dank and damp it is the more bugs and snakes and everything else you're going to get down there because it's a better breeding ground for those type of things. So if you keep it nice and clean and dry they don't live there. That's why the bugs don't live in our house much. You'll hear crickets but they're in the dark places, right? So if you keep it really closed off and you keep it clean and dry the bugs and stuff kind of go away for the most part. Mice tend to go away, snakes tend to go away. It makes it a much cleaner healthier environment and that's really not where those types of things like to be. So why are we doing this stop spiders and stop bugs and everything else, Jason?

Jason Harmon: Bugs, spiders, all these little tiny varmints they feed on each other actually. One's a food source for another. The damp crawl space is a nice plane because it's providing moisture, it's attracting bugs and other little things which they're providing a food source for a bigger one, say a cricket - a cricket's a food source for a next larger animal all the way up to the problem where you're starting to get mice in your crawl space especially in the fall when they're coming in out of the fields if you happen to live in the country. By eliminating the first level of this food source we're eliminating all the other levels that feed on the food sources below the food chain.

So it's a matter of eliminating the moisture, eliminating the food sources, and you've created yourself an environment underneath your house that is healthy for you and your family.

Bill Anderson: You know, Jason, when we do our normal inspection, our first inspection when we actually go out and see the homeowner originally you'll see the camelback crickets and you'll see spiders and you'll see all these other things. After we're done the biggest thing that our service people talk about because we come out up to three times the first year and then yearly after that and one of the biggest things I hear is "Billy listen, after the first year all we get is basically cobwebs. After we come back the second year normally the cobwebs aren't even there because we've already pushed the cobwebs away because when we do our inspections we crawl the entire crawl space so we knock down all the cobwebs and then they're gone. I think spiders I guess are pretty much at the top of the food chain as far as the bugs are concerned so once we kill off its food source the spiders even go away. I'm not saying we're a bug company by any means and I'm not saying you shouldn't have your bugs treated and everything else but why not have something that's a passive type of a system if you can. If you're going to get the benefits of saving 10% to 20% off your heating and air conditioning costs, if you're going to get the bugs going, at least slowing down your house and all of a sudden maybe the indoor allergens, those allergy triggers, if we can reduce those triggers, if we can start reducing everything, just a little bit here and a little bit here and a little bit here that's normally where you have the big issues, right? It's not one big glaring problem in life that you stop one thing and it takes care of everything; it's the 50 little things that you take care of that keep the big things from happening. Can you think of any other type of systems - and I know I'm putting you on the spot here so I apologize - but can you think of any other type of I don't want to say complaints that people are giving us but concerns I guess? Is there anything you're really hearing in the field besides the things we've already touched on?

Jason Harmon: Well another thing - and this is something that doesn't happen often but it does happen - and that is complaints that their floors are springy and spongy. In a couple of cases we have found that the excess moisture in the crawl space area has negatively affected their floor joists system to the point where it's deteriorating and not properly supporting the floor of the house which in turn is making the floor springy.

Bill Anderson: Think about it as when you have spaghetti or pasta and it's dry it's fairly rigid, as far as pasta goes is rigid. Well when you induce moisture into that equation it gets nice and soft and that's the reason why you can take the same spaghetti stick that was very rigid 20 minute ago and now it will wrap around your fork so springy floors definitely I mean we've had to go in there and sometimes it's not so bad to where we have to put our jacking systems in there, it's just a matter of getting it dried up and the springiness starts to go away. And we're building our houses differently now. We used to use some really old hard growth wood. I was in a house the other day that was made back in the 1800's, it was like rough saw and cut wood underneath the homes and it was just as hard as it probably was the day it was built and it was a nice piece of wood. Well the new stuff they're using, they're building these trees and -- not really building these trees but growing these trees in - I don't know how long they're building trees nowadays, probably I'll get an arborist on and actually ask them those questions or somebody actually who is an arborist and they have the answer to it email me please because - it's bill@dryzone.com but I know it's not fast and it's not slow, it's fairly quick lumber. So if it's quick lumber then that means it's not as dense I guess is the word I'm looking for as the old lumber that we used to use when we built houses. So it gets softer and molds can attack it faster too.

Jason Harmon: Bill one of our inspectors the other day was checking house and when he came back he said "I've never seen that before" I said "What do you mean?" He said "Their floor joists were trees that had just been flattened off on the top." This house was built back in the 1800's also. But you know what? He never found a bit of rot in any of those floor joists and the reason being they were hard woods, they were oaks, and a lot of the woods today are not hard like the oak was years and years ago. The other thing that I'm afraid that we're going to have some problems with down the road if crawl spaces and basements are not properly controlled with humidity as a new type of flooring system where it's not actually a solid piece of lumber like we're used to, it's a 2x4 laid flatways and it's got a piece of plywood or particle board in between it to create what looks like an I-beam. And they're perfectly strong as they are and they meet all the codes but we don't have as much wood in those as we do in the old floor joists and question is what is humidity going to do to these down the road?

Bill Anderson: Yes, normally it's actually flake board that we normally see, right? So when you take a flake board or a particle board, plywood, whatever if you get moisture on that it delaminates because all that is just - flake board is basically called OSB, Oriented strand board, which means they take a bunch of chips like what you see the road crews do when they're grinding up the trees, they just make little teeny tiny chips and they orient them all on a row basically and they stick a whole bunch of glue down and they compress it and that's how you kind of make plywood where you just take laminated sheets and you compress it together and that's how you make plywood. Well that glue doesn't hold up very well under moisture and if that's one of the supporting joists in your home and it starts to delaminate how much weaker is that? It kills me Jason, like I said great product, I think they have a great expanding capability, I've talked with our engineers about it and they're like "Billy listen they're great however -" That however that's holding up your home for God's sakes. I mean how much is your home worth nowadays. I mean it's not maybe as much as worth as it was a couple of years ago but it's still worth a whole heck of a lot of money and if the entire subfloor is being held up with stuff that's starting to delaminate and fall apart how long is that going to last?

Jason Harmon: I'm sure these products were designed specifically for this purpose but my big question is the fat was excessive moisture over a long period of time taken into consideration when the tests were done on these products. A home a day is a lot of money even though our economy right now is down and the prices of homes have come down, a home is still probably the number one investment of an individual and it's probably the one thing that they've spent the most money on. Bill Anderson: I thought it was gas nowadays, Jason. Jason Harmon: Well I'll tell you gas is fast catching up. I'll tell you Bill this is way off the subject but back in the early ‘60s we were selling a 1000-square foot house on a half-acre lot for $14,950 and today you can't even buy a car for that. Bill Anderson: My mom and dad actually just bought a car the other day and I think it was like $17,000 or $18,000 so that's insane. The way you can reach us on the internet is DryZone.com. My email address is bill@dryzone.com and Jason's is Jason@dryzone.com. Well as to Jason I appreciate it this morning, I know you've got to get up early to do these things so can I count on you gain next week? Jason Harmon: Sure Bill, I enjoy doing it.

Bill Anderson: Well folks listen we appreciate you listening to us and please shoot us an email, Bill and Jason on DryZone.com or just DryZone.com. Thanks Jason. Jason Harmon: See you next week Bill.

Who you gonna call for Waterproofing and Structural Repairs in Delmarva peninsula

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:53:37 -0400

Many stories have been done on projects like “HOW DO I FIX MY CRAWLSPACE WALLS?” or the ever-popular “WHY DO MY BASEMENT WALLS LEAK?” Well today, I bring to you a much more interesting story “WHO IS GOING TO FIX MY CRAWLSPACE OR BASEMENT WALLS!” DryZone is the leading crawlspace and basement Remediation Company on Delmarva and the main reason why these people who work for us!

DryZone has a very rigorous screening process that in some cases may take weeks for someone to become an employee at DryZone. We understand that our company values and vision may not be for everyone, we work in muddy crawlspaces, broken foundation walls are scary, and when your basement floods in the middle of winter , who is going to stand in that cold water? Remember that homes in DE or MD that have a dirt floor in the crawl have a potential for large issues, and you will want the most highly trained professionals to handle those issues.

Every member at DryZone is certified from our national dealership in Seymour, CT for waterproofing or our national foundation dealership in Omaha, NE. Therefore, you can rest assured that when your crawlspace has smells from water in it, or if the walls of your basement are falling down, DryZone has a dedicated crew that will be able to take all of those concerns and lay them to rest.

An overview of CleanSpace and what you can expect from our installers

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:06:48 -0500

Male Speaker: Your home is your biggest investment and provides warmth and shelter for you and your family. Now is the time to repair your home for the winter weather that is just around the corner. Do you have a lead basement, water in your crawl space, or cracks in your foundation? DryZone provides waterproofing and crawl space encapsulation products and services all over Delaware and the eastern shore of Maryland. For a free inspection and estimate, log on at dryzone.com/theduck. DryZone will keep you ahead of the storm.

Bill Anderson: This is Bill Anderson from DryZone and once again I'm being joined by my good friend Jason Harman.

Jason Harman: Hi Bill, glad to see you again today.

Bill Anderson: Well listen, we actually have a treat this morning. We're going to be joined with Johnny Scarborough who actually does a lot of our crawl spaces for our company.

Johnny Scarborough: Good morning, I'm Johnny, DryZone.

Jason Harman: Hi Johnny, glad to have you with us this morning. I was wondering if you would be able to tell us a little bit about what you do when you go on an appointment to check a crawl space that has issues.

Johnny Scarborough: Well one of the things I do is go out and introduce myself and the company to the homeowner. One of the very important things is you don't go in and just dive right into the crawl space even though that's what a lot of people think we actually do. It's a lot like going to the doctor - the doctor wants to find out what's going on with you so he can prescribe the right treatment for you. Well it's the same thing with your crawl space - I want to find out what's going on, what's concerning you about your crawl space. It takes a few minutes, it can take anywhere about six to seven, eight minutes, it doesn't take that long to find out what's going on. Then we'll go in, take an inspection of your crawl space, and I do that by taking pictures, measuring humidity and temperature, also check the moisture content in your wood and I'm looking for any foundation issues, any rot, any mold or microbial growth, any holes in the walls, any indications of water being up on the sides of the walls or on the piers which is a block work that holds your house up.

Bill Anderson: Johnny why is that important to see if there's water on the piers themselves? It's in the middle of the house, right?

Johnny Scarborough: Yes, that's in the middle of the house but it's a better indication of how high the water table has actually come underneath your house.

Bill Anderson: Okay, because the whole idea is you're actually going to have stains on all over the walls.

Johnny Scarborough: Absolutely.

Bill Anderson: If it's below grade anyway.

Johnny Scarborough: This is true, Bill, because external walls are against the wall all the time so we're checking the center of the house if you have foundation walls going to the center or if you have supporting piers and that gives us a true indication on how high the water table has risen under your house.

Bill Anderson: Johnny, let me ask you this question - you condition our crawl spaces, you help the rest of the sales team design these conditioned crawl spaces for us and that term has been definitely thrown around a lot. There are a lot of different definitions of that. I've seen some homes where they've had somebody cut the hole out of a duct and literally just left it there, they didn't put a register or anything on it, just a great big hole in the duct and they threw some Sismo plastic on the ground and blocked the vents, charged these brand new homes thousands of dollars for this conditioned crawl space. Tell us a little bit about exactly what a really true conditioned crawl space is and what you really need to do to really qualify as that.

Johnny Scarborough: In true conditioned crawl spaces you want to isolate it from the earth, you want to dehumidify it and keep relative humidity down there below 60% as much as possible, that way the mold and microbial growth will go dormant, it will no longer affect your house, plus it will also dry your wood out too if you have wet wood so you want to have a dehumidifier down there. Now if you have it isolated from the earth by using CleanSpace liners, wall liners, and pier liners then you also want to keep the water out from underneath this liner and you do that by using sun pumps and perimeter drains. It's very, very important to keep the water out from under it. The liquid water will not physically hurt your house; it's the vapors off the water that kills your house.
A lot of people don't understand that but it's truly like liquid gasoline will not burn but the vapors off the gasoline will burn. It's a very similar situation, the vapors off the water is what kills your house.

Jason Harman: Johnny, we've heard over the year’s pros and cons concerning foundation vents. Can you tell us what the real true story is concerning foundation vents?

Johnny Scarborough: Well Jason foundation vents are really bad for a house. Ever since we were small and growing up, because I'm not going to tell you my age, I grew up down in Louisiana is where I grew up at. Down there just like it is pretty much nationwide you open the vents in the summer time, you close them in the winter time. But the problem being year round you get - in the summer time especially - you get the warm moist air that comes under your crawl space, raises your relative humidity, you get all that moisture under there. In the winter time you get the cold air that comes through the vents because no vent closes solid, they just don't do it, so you need to plug them and if you don't do that you get that cold air that comes in and most folks have got their air conditioning vents, heating vents in their crawl space or at least part of them depending on how many stories you've got in your house. So you get that whole there robbing your ventilation ducts of the heat that you're paying hard-earned dollars for. Summer time you get that hot warm air coming in there robbing the coolness from your air conditioner so you're using your air conditioner and your heater to truly condition your crawl space and that's not the right way to do it because you're spending a tremendous amount of money to do it that way.

Jason Harman: So it might equate the summer time situation to say a glass of iced tea sitting on a table, the iced tea and the glass with ice is cool and it creates a condensation on the outside of the glass because the air around that glass is warm. So as I understand it this hot moist air coming into the cool crawl space actually creates condensation, is that correct?

Johnny Scarborough: Absolutely, Jason that was a perfect analogy.

Bill Anderson: The whole idea, if you guys ever watch folks who do the weather, in the winter time you're going to see - or even in the summer time you'll see this great big blue ribbon that comes out of the north and you see this great big red ribbon that comes out of the south. Well the blue ribbon is cold air, the red ribbon is hot air and when they meet that's when you normally get your thunderstorms. At the end of the day condensation is nothing but rain on a global scale so when you talk about these little micro environments that happen down underneath our house and we start saying the big M word which is mold there are some companies out there I think that really try to freak you out a little bit with mold and at the end of the day if you keep the relative humidity in your house down mold can't grow. Mold needs a certain humidity level, a certain moisture content for it to live so that's the reason why mold won't grow on beef jerky, it will definitely grow on a steak but it won't grow on beef jerky and the reason why is the moisture content of that has been dropped by so much that it can't sustain any life.
Mold is lie just like we're life and we need a food source and our houses are made out of food for mold, it's made out of dead organic material that's trees and paper and those other wonderful things that we use. So when we talk about keeping our houses healthy you gentlemen know what the number one indoor allergen is?

Jason Harman: Dust mites.

Bill Anderson: Dust mites - you know it's actually the actual - it's not the dust mites that you're working to --

Jason Harman: It's the droppings.

Bill Anderson: It's their droppings that you're allergic to, yes, so dust mites are these nasty little creatures that live in our bed and they live in our couches and everything else and what happens is they leave their droppings, that's what we're breathing - kind of icky and kind of gross but if we can actually reduce the relative humidity they don't live in our house then like I said we can actually help stop the number one inner allergen just by stopping that. One of the biggest things I think we hear if we go into a house especially in the beach area when there's like second homes is "I walked in and my house has this musty smell" right Johnny?

Johnny Scarborough: That's absolutely correct. I know of one homeowner, they stay up in New York three or four months out of the year and they come back down to Delaware to when they're over back down to the eastern shores. She called us up, went out there, and got a call from her the other day stating that she was absolutely blown away with how she walked into her house and it smelled so much better. Last year when she came in she found mold on her leather couches, she found mold inside her cabinets, she found microbial growth pretty much everywhere, and she had to have the house fully cleaned before she could move into it. This year she came down, unloaded her suitcases, moved right in with the bed [inaudible 10:08] she just loved it. Now I get this not just from her, I get it from everybody that I talk to, every homeowner I go to tells me pretty much the same thing. After we go on in there, put the CleanSpace ladder in there, isolated your house from the earth, put the sun pumps, perimeter drains in there and dehumidify these houses they tell me that the air upstairs smells better, tastes better, and they sleep better. A lot of people don't realize that the reason that happens is up to 50% of the air you're breathing in the living area has gone through your crawl space so it's bringing mold spores, dust mites you just don't realize it.

Bill Anderson: Now you said that we're breathing 50% of the air that term's actually called the Stack Effect, correct?

Johnny Scarborough: That's absolutely correct because your house breathes from the bottom up, that's why your attic's a thousand degrees and your crawl space is 70 degrees.

Bill Anderson: Hot air rises and cold air goes down so I mean if that's truly happening that's the reason why smoke goes up the chimney because the smoke is hot and everything else. When you're breathing all of that most people - I remember when we first started DryZone I had a lady say "Son, listen, you need to go down there and you need to have a mask on because I am just absolutely frightened for your health" and I'm like "Ma'am most of the air I'm breathing down there is what you're breathing right now" and she kind of sat down and thought about it for a while and she was like "Well go get me a mask out of your truck so I can breathe until you're done." That musty smell, which we get. Go put your face in your crawl space for a while, it's amazing how much air truly does get down in there and when you were talking about moisture earlier, Johnny, the air that comes down in there it's the outside air. So we used to open up these vents and that's what my Uncle Bill told my dad to do when I was a kid because we moved here from Colorado, there was no crawl spaces in Colorado, right? So my dad said "Fine, we'll open them up, no big deal, open it up." The first time I had a house it was wet down there, it was nasty, the insulation was all wet, I was running some cable wires and I just kind of thought that's the way it was supposed to be and that's where a lot of our homeowners, I think they just have accepted the fact that it's supposed to be this little dungeon that nobody wants to go into and that's oaky because it's not part of our house. Well those little vents you can't keep something dry with wet air and if we're truly letting air in there that's what we're letting in there, that humid air, that nasty sticky horrible humidity that we have down here in the summer time.

Jason Harman: Johnny you mentioned a little bit earlier a product called CleanSpace, it's used in the crawl space to separate the house from the earth. Can you tell our listening audience the difference between the plastic that builders put in a crawl space and your CleanSpace material?

Johnny Scarborough: The plastic that most builders put in your CleanSpace is traditionally 6 ml plastic. It will break down over a period of years. Our CleanSpace system is warranted for 25 years against breaking down. It is made of multiple layers, seven layers thick, it has Ultra-Fresh in it. A lot of people say "Okay, what's Ultra-Fresh?" Ultra-Fresh is the same product that they put in your car vents to prevent mold and mildew. You never see your car vents have mold and mildew in it. So this has anti-microbial growth product in it too. It also is UV protected. We don't want the sunlight that could possibly get in from having that.

Bill Anderson: Yes, you're actually truly protecting that liner from birth at that point because I mean it's made in the light, it's being stored in the light, it comes to our facility at Milton, it's stored in the light, while the guys are working on it it's normally outside before they take it in the crawl space so I mean they're truly protecting it from birth.

Johnny Scarborough: This is true and it's also reinforced too to prevent it from breaking apart, pulling apart. It's very, very durable and that's why a lot of people don't understand that you can walk on it, you can crawl on it, you have multiple people down there in your crawl space checking your vents and the way it seemed together is not just taped together, it's truly sealed together.

Bill Anderson: Johnny, I was actually on an appointment with Jason the other the day and this homeowner was having a pest control company come in there to condition their crawl space, right? I'm not a real big fan of all these different things within a company and I say that with four divisions in my company but they're all related. I have a crawl space conditioning company and a basement waterproofing company that also finishes basements and we also fix foundations. Well that's everything below our feet. Some of these companies they may be landscapers and pest control and they make milk on Sundays and they're fixing cars on Thursdays. We sit down and we talk about the different grades of plastic and these homeowners were very concerned that they were going to replace their HVAC unit if not now sometime in the near future and they didn't want to see it get ripped up. And Jason had actually brought out a sample of the CleanSpace. Well as soon as they saw it they were like "Well I have no worries and I could just drag the HVAC across this." I'm not saying the unit’s was getting dragged across, that might puncture it a little bit, but these things are way thicker than a pool liner. When you talk about CleanSpace it's this huge plastic that has this protective matting underneath it so I mean you could literally just walk on it all day long and we do for home shows, we walk on it all day long and it never gets cuffed up unless somebody's down there with their golf spikes on it's really not going to get hurt.

Johnny Scarborough: You're right, Bill, it's very, very durable. I don't know if any other product out there, to my knowledge, that is better for your crawl space as far as durability is concerned.

Jason Harman: One of the concerns that some of our homeowners have brought up has been when you bring this material up the wall of my crawl space how is the termite inspector going to be able to inspect my house for termites. Will you tell us what you do in that case, Johnny?

Johnny Scarborough: Well in that case there we've talked to numerous pest control companies over the years and they have given us a range of three inches from your sill plate or three inches from your top concrete block which is where your sill plate is. We leave them that three-inch margin there so they can look for termite tunnels and everything else.

Jason Harman: That answered the question and that has eased the minds of most of our homeowners because it does give access to their pest control people for doing a proper examination because your termites actually come from the ground up through tunnels on the inside of the block wall to get into the wood members.

Bill Anderson: Really the neat thing I can tell you about termites is everybody knows that termites eat wood, right? And you guys have all seen termite damage. Well normally there's a whole bunch of sawdust that's lying around termites, right? When you see the termite damage it's like it's just the wood turned to powder.

Johnny Scarborough: The sawdust you see around there is the wood. Termites don't eat the wood itself; they eat the product that's in the wood.

Bill Anderson: Exactly Johnny, you're absolutely right. When there's mildew there's mold and there's microbes inside that wood, that's what those termites are getting nutrition from so if we can stop the food source which is the mildew, the mold, and the microbes.

Johnny Scarborough: Absolutely.

Bill Anderson: Then why would termites attack something that they're not going to get any nutrition from? It would be like us just eating up a steak and just spitting it back out on the plate. It wouldn't make any sense, we're not just going to chew our food and get rid of it. So if you can truly stop that and a lot of bug guys will tell you "Get that mulch away from your house" because that mulch is inherently moist so if you stop that wet food source from being around your house or even in your house then you have a lot less chances for those types of critters to infect you.

Jason Harman: I think one of the neatest comments that we've had recently was from a lady who had her crawl space encapsulated by us. If I remember correctly the month was November of last year when she notified us that she was still running around her house in her bare feet and that was the first time she had ever been able to do that. Encapsulation of the crawl space actually made her house floors warmer.

Bill Anderson: And you know, Jason that actually happens more often than not. When we talk about insulation and all those things that we do the only reason why we have insulation on our floors is because we know our floors are going to be cold in the winter time, right? That's because we have these really big holes in our foundation that let cold air in and how much sense dos that really make. So if we could truly isolate that house from the air outside the floors inherently have to stay warmer especially if we have our mechanicals down there. When you have the HVAC ducts running through there in those vents even when they're closed they're not really closed, you can still see outside. So when air is still getting down there and maybe 30/40 degree air and that's kind of the average temperature, wouldn't you say that we get down here?

Johnny Scarborough: Kind of about that.

Bill Anderson: Like this year was kind of exceptional, it was like super, super cold but I'd say 20/30/40 degrees is our normal temperature and if we're taking that kind of air and bringing it into our crawl space well then those ducts inside, the air that's inside those ducts are running 70/80 degree air?

Johnny Scarborough: Well you're going to lose at least 20/25 degrees of our air temperature.

Bill Anderson: Exactly. And the sad part is air is not heated and cooled very efficiently when it's wet, it does a lot better job when it's dry, so if you can get it dry down there you can actually, number one, start saving money on your heating and cooling costs but now your ducts are always going to have a little bit of radiant heat off of them and if it's not being affected by the outside air hot air rises once again so it's actually touching your floors and your floors should stay warmer in the winter time. I love it when homeowners tell us that, Jason, that's some of the biggest compliments we've gotten. I had a lady who had a good amount of cats in her house and she said that she never went around barefooted because the cats shed their nails and all that stuff so she had to get underneath her house or underneath her bed one time to pick something out from underneath it and she was just so amazed at how warm those floors were. She called us up four o'clock on like a Thursday afternoon, she was like "Billy, I can't believe this. You guys really said that and I really didn't believe you but I figured whatever, I still need to get it done, but wow, I can't believe how much warmer my floors are."

Johnny Scarborough: Well another thing Bill. A lot of homeowners have hardwood floors too. Think of it this way - in the winter time sometimes your feet feel like they're going to stick to these hardwood floors so you get these floors warmer you can walk around, you don't have to have shoes on, you can walk around barefoot if you want to but on the other hand until you talk to any flooring guy and he'll tell you for a person, shall we say, he will tell you to keep the moisture out from under this wood, keep the moisture away from the wood, if you don't it's going to start buckling. I've seen so many hardwood floors that were starting to buckle. If you keep the moisture away from that and you stand a less chance that your hardwood floors being damaged.

Jason Harman: Johnny you were talking earlier about putting the dehumidifier in your crawl space and I'm wondering if you could tell our audience how you dispose of the water created by the dehumidifier?

Johnny Scarborough: Well we take the moisture out of the air, we don't just drain it back into the floor normally, and we never drain it back into the floor. We could put it into a kind of safe pump and pump it outside of your crawl space. You have perimeter drains and sun pumps; dehumidifier will drain into the sun pump or drain into the perimeter drainage. Now if you ever run into a situation which is rare but occasionally, it does happen where you don't want a sun pump or don't need a sun pump then we have a device called a Smart Drain which is just a dry pit with a lid on it with an alarm on it and we drain it into there. Bottom line is we do not put this moisture back into your crawl space. One way or other we get this moisture from the dehumidifier outside your house.

Jason Harman: So the homeowner does not have to worry about crawling underneath your crawl space and emptying a bucket on their dehumidifier.

Johnny Scarborough: Oh no, never, never have to worry about that. A lot of homeowners have asked me that same question. Do I have to go down there and empty this bucket on it? You never have to go down there and empty the bucket on it because it doesn't have a bucket; it has a drain on it that drains to a device that gets rid of the water.

Bill Anderson: You gentlemen talked a few minutes ago about the alarms and all that stuff. I think that's one thing that really separates our sun pumps from the competitions is we didn't go to loads and by, number one, our perimeter drainage system but we have these alarms that are going to let you know if there are water issues down there. We've all seen plumbing leaks. So you go down to the box storage, you pick up the supplies, come back and you fix it but a lot of times you don't even know that happens. I'd say one out of every - three out of every five homes that we've been into have had some type of leak in it and it may not be a big leak, it's just a simple drip, drip, drip. You think about that in terms of how much we pay for water nowadays and I'm not fortunate enough to live in a place where I can have a well behind my house and we're on city water - it gets expensive. I had no idea how expensive water was until like I said we moved into our development and to tell you what we almost stopped watering our grass because it was so expensive so those little drips and drips and drips they all add up and with those alarms that we have on, whether it's the sun pumps or the Smart Drain like Johnny was talking about, it's going to let you know that "Hey, there's a problem down there."

Johnny Scarborough: Absolutely Bill and not to mention that it doesn't matter if you're on city water or well water, you are still paying for your water, everybody pays for their water. And if you do happen to have a well and you've got a small drip down there and you don't know about it you're also adding the wear and tear to your well pump.

Bill Anderson: Johnny you actually bring up a very good point. That's something that I never really even thought of, but yes those things kick on, they kick off, they kick on, and they kick off.

Jason Harman: Johnny we have a lot of modular homes on the Delmarva Peninsula. Is the crawl space encapsulation can it be used on these also?

Johnny Scarborough: Crawl space encapsulation can be used on any home -- it can be used on modular homes, manufactured homes, stick-built homes, poured walls, concrete walls, brick walls. A lot of people don't like the term but it can be used on mobile homes too. A lot of people want to go to calling it manufactured homes and that's fine, I agree, I used to live in a mobile home, I loved it, if I ever had a chance I'd go to another manufactured home, I just love the way they're built in a controlled environment - that's my personal opinion on that. But we can sue the CleanSpace encapsulation system on any home built that's above a slab.

Bill Anderson: And the neat thing is it doesn't really even have to have a foundation either; it can have the skirting on it. We probably have done more homes without the cosmetic foundation than ones with it.

There was a house that we had taken cared of - I guess it was about a month or two ago - and it was just a small little single white trailer, the lady bought it back in 1978, she's always lived in it, her husband and her [inaudible 24:34] put an addition on it and she knew that she wanted to protect that investment for the rest of her life and then when she passed it on she wanted to make sure that her kids weren't burdened with that issue because the houses that are modular they're built on steel and everything else so the last thing you want to do is get a bunch of rust and weaken that structure because this was this lady's life. So when we sat down we came up with our solution and it was a perfect fit for her, no more issues with the outside air and she had a couple of other companies come in there and they tried to "condition" her crawl space for her and when she saw our product it's was like "Billy, this is a no-brainer, this has to work, this makes sense." So I think we really do try to come from a common sense standpoint.

Johnny Scarborough: This is true, Bill. And another thing too that people worry about manufactured homes, mobile homes, whichever you choose, if you happen to be living in some place where you're just leasing the lot and you're not buying the land it's sitting on a lot of the rules says you can't put in something permanent. Well CleanSpace encapsulation can go under these houses because it will move with the house if the house ever moves. We can take it and move it with the house to where it goes next time. Most of the park owners have no problem with us putting this in there because it's not a permanent as they see it, permanent structure that cannot be moved because it can.

Bill Anderson: Yes, I mean they brought it in, they can bring it out.

Johnny Scarborough: Absolutely.

Bill Anderson: Jason when we first started our company I was sitting there actually talking with Basement Systems a few weeks ago and he had actually called us when we first started a micro business because my father-in-law who actually is my partner in DryZone we both had another business and kind of came together and we had no idea that it was going to be as big as it is. We've actually were right almost to the point where we've almost installed a million square feet, I think we're 758 hundred thousand square feet of CleanSpace in the ground so we'll actually surpass that easily by the spring. When you talk about the volume of plastic that is, that's an ungodly amount of plastic not to mention the fact that we hold all of these different awards. Last year we had installed more - they're called turtles - than anybody else in our entire network and there's what? Four or five hundred contractors worldwide at this point that install these same products that we do. We're actually lucky enough that we go to our annual conventions every year and we had won some fairly nice awards last year. One of the neatest things that we did win was the fact that we sold more crawl space turtles than anybody else in the entire world at this point.

Jason Harman: And something Bill probably won't tell you, folks but I'm going to tell you this, DryZone received the Integrity Award out of all of the international and national companies involved with basement systems and I think that was quite something for then to be able to be chosen to receive this award by the owner of Basement Systems, Larry Janesky.

Bill Anderson: Well actually Jason I do appreciate it, we do try to be a little modest. If anybody would actually like to come down and look at our awards we do have a 15,000b square foot facility in Milton, Delaware, we invite any homeowner who would like to come down, you can actually see our Rookie of the Year Award - that one I think I'm actually the most proudest of Jason. When we had gotten our award we got it in the Basketball Hall of Fame and Bill Walton, the ex-basketball player, the commentator had actually given us that award so that one's definitely probably displayed in our office because you only get one shot at that. Well folks, listen, I think we're just about up out of time this week. I do want to give you a way to get a hold of us. My email address is bill@dryzone.com so if you have any questions you can feel free, give me an email; Like I said my email address is bill@dryzone.com, our website actually is dryzone.com. Johnny I'd like to thank you for coming in this morning.

Johnny Scarborough: Thank you Bill.

Bill Anderson: Jason as always I appreciate you being here with me and helping me work through this new show of ours. I hope everybody is actually enjoying our show. If you have any comments on things that you might want to hear about, might have questions on like I said that's when you definitely want to shoot me the email. Until next week I want to, like I said, thank you gentlemen and thank you folks for listening to our show.

Male Speaker: Your home is your biggest investment and provides warmth and shelter fro you and our family. Now is the time to repair your home for the winter weather that is just around the corner. Do you have a wet basement, water in your crawl space, or cracks in your foundation? DryZone provides waterproofing and crawl space encapsulation products and services all over Delaware and eastern shore of Maryland. For a free inspection and estimate, log on at dryzone.com/theduck. DryZone will keep you ahead of the storm.