In this episode of the Structure Talk podcast, hosts Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry discuss personal health changes related to diet and cholesterol management, followed by a deep dive into water heater maintenance, specifically focusing on the importance of anode rods. They share personal experiences and insights on the effectiveness of powered anode rods and their impact on water heater longevity. The conversation wraps up with Tessa discussing her upcoming home diagnostics work related to ice dams and moisture issues in attics.
Check this link to learn more about Inspector Empire Builder:
https://www.iebcoaching.com
Takeaways
Reuben successfully cut his cholesterol in half by changing his diet.
Tessa is looking to make dietary changes to manage her cholesterol levels.
The China Study book had a transformative impact on Reuben’s health choices.
Replacing the anode rod in a water heater is crucial for maintenance.
Powered anode rods can prevent corrosion without needing replacement.
Reuben’s experience with a new impact wrench made replacing the anode rod easier.
Tessa is investigating moisture issues in a client’s attic after a new metal roof installation.
Proper ventilation is key to preventing condensation in attics.
The hosts emphasize the importance of community and sharing knowledge in home inspection.
Listeners are encouraged to share their experiences with anode rods.
Chapters
00:00 Health and Diet Changes
03:03 Water Heater Maintenance and Innovations
06:04 The Impact of Anode Rods
09:04 Home Diagnostics and Ice Dams
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben Saltzman (00:00.812)
Welcome back to the Structure Talk podcast. Tessa, how you doing today? What’s new?
Tessa Murry (00:06.349)
Hey, good afternoon, Ruben. Not much. Can’t complain. I will say on a personal note, I found out that I have really high cholesterol recently. So I’m going to have to talk to you about what you did recently with your change in diet. I don’t know if that had to do with cholesterol on your part, but I know that you switched around what you were eating and you made a big difference in your health, didn’t you?
Reuben Saltzman (00:21.195)
no.
Reuben Saltzman (00:32.76)
cholesterol was the driver. That was the one metric I was really after. And as soon as I changed my diet, I cut my cholesterol numbers in half within two months.
Tessa Murry (00:35.924)
Really?
Tessa Murry (00:45.741)
Okay, well I’ve been tracking my cholesterol yearly for like the last three or four years and it keeps going up and up and up and my cholesterol is like 252. My bad cholesterol is like 149, but my good cholesterol is high as well. So that helps. The doctor is not telling me to go on like statins or meds immediately, but I’ve got a little bit of time where I can intervene and apparently according to them, change my diet, exercise more and lose weight.
Reuben Saltzman (01:15.15)
Mmm. You lose weight? Are you kidding me Tess? I just saw you last week. Okay, I’m sorry. I’m going into territory I shouldn’t go into but stop it.
Tessa Murry (01:15.821)
That was so…
Tessa Murry (01:25.195)
Well, let’s just say, okay, so I’m a pretty healthy weight, as most people would probably recognize. So I don’t know if weight loss is going to be the cure. This is a genetic issue. My dad had the same thing. He tried changing his diet in his 40s, and then he went on meds in his 40s. And he’s skinny as a rail. it’s just, I need your advice, Ruben. I’m gonna have to talk to you.
Can I eat eggs though? That’s what I want to know. Because I love eggs so much and I think there’s conflicting information out there. Are they bad? Are they good? What do I do?
Reuben Saltzman (01:59.662)
I am not the authority, I’m not the expert, I have no idea. I will give you the book that I read.
Tessa Murry (02:03.149)
Thanks
Tessa Murry (02:07.231)
Well, you cut your cholesterol in half in two months, so I might as well try it.
Reuben Saltzman (02:10.54)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve stuck with it. I mean, here we are. I’m like, I don’t know, maybe 16 months into this new diet. And I’m sticking with it. I think this is what I’ll be doing for life. the book. Yeah, the book again, if anybody missed our podcast where we mentioned it was called the China study. Yeah. The China study. That’s it. Yep.
Tessa Murry (02:18.849)
Wow. And you’re feeling good. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:31.219)
The China study? Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (02:35.884)
That’s that that was a crazy crazy transformative book for me. So check it out.
Tessa Murry (02:41.138)
No. Before that, were you doing like keto and paleo? I can’t remember.
Reuben Saltzman (02:45.358)
not, I do, you know, touch of that, you know, I’d toy around with kind of going paleo stuff and I’d, I’d eat around that diet, but it was never 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So.
Tessa Murry (02:52.044)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (02:56.277)
Okay. Okay. All right. I’m going to dive into it and I’ll keep you people posted.
Reuben Saltzman (03:03.468)
I want you to read it and I want you to read the whole thing though. You gotta read the whole thing. It’s a thick book. There’s a lot of data, but I don’t know how it could not change your mind. yeah, sorry. Sorry. You gotta read it all. All right.
Tessa Murry (03:06.956)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (03:11.444)
Really.
Tessa Murry (03:15.017)
I’m more of a Cliff Note person, okay. I’ll do it.
Okay, well sorry, I took that stunner rabbit hole. Ruben, what are we talking about today?
Reuben Saltzman (03:23.886)
No, it’s okay.
Reuben Saltzman (03:29.186)
Well, today, you know, we got a short short show. This this is like a 15 minute show today. Maybe I wanted to you know what? Before I get into it, though, shout out to our sponsors, IEB Inspector Empire Builder. Fantastic resource for any home inspector who wants advice and coaching on running their business, whether it’s a one man or one woman shop or you’ve got a team of 50 inspectors.
Tessa Murry (03:38.818)
Thanks.
Reuben Saltzman (03:57.046)
you will find a fantastic community of people who are more than willing to give advice. We share stuff openly. Love IEB. I will have a link to them in the show notes. as far as our topic goes today, Tess, this is just kind of a quick follow up. We’ve done a number of podcasts about water heaters recently. We had my plumber friend, Tim, on the show, Tim Hammack, with Paul Bunyan Plumbing.
Tessa Murry (04:22.689)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (04:25.038)
super knowledgeable guy, I grilled him on water heaters and we talked about water heater maintenance and he said one of the most important things that they do is replacing the anode rod on a water heater and he talked about how they install powered anode rods. It’s this thing that plugs into the wall. It doesn’t have any metal that gets eaten up. It just uses black magic.
to prevent your tank from corroding. I don’t know exactly how it works, but he says it works. So I thought, okay, I’m totally convinced. I’m gonna have to try this myself. I ended up, well, I couldn’t do it. I think I talked on the show a couple of weeks ago.
where I used a socket wrench and I couldn’t do it. I put a big bar on the end of my socket wrench and tried to crank this anode rod out of my water heater and everything started twisting. The pipes started kind of deforming and couldn’t do that. I used an impact driver. I’ve got a nice Milwaukee M18 18 volt brushless impact driver. Couldn’t get it to budge using that thing. And he said, you need an impact wrench.
Tessa Murry (05:37.817)
Tooth.
Reuben Saltzman (05:44.366)
You know, the Milwaukee impact wrenches, they’re like 300 bucks for the tool alone. thought I’m not buying one of those, but then come black Friday, I happened to notice home Depot has the tool for 200 bucks with, with a battery kit. Normally sells for like 450 or something. And I went, okay, this is less than half price. I have to do it. I bought it. I sold the battery kit to somebody on Facebook marketplace for 75 bucks.
Tessa Murry (05:44.593)
my gosh.
Tessa Murry (06:04.949)
my gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (06:12.834)
bringing my total investment down to $125 and I got myself a new toy. Yeah, so I got the impact driver and I put it on there and it came out like butter. I mean, there was nothing to it. It was like child’s play. I loosened the, I removed the anode rod on my water heater. My water heater is four years old.
Tessa Murry (06:19.143)
my gosh.
Tessa Murry (06:29.323)
Hmm.
Really? Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (06:41.318)
and the anode rod was completely depleted. There was nothing left save for a wire stick. That was it. So I got it. I pulled it out four years old and I said, okay, this was worth it. And I removed the wire stick. I installed one of those powered anode rods. And now I will report back in a decade.
Tessa Murry (06:51.053)
my gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (07:10.092)
and I’ll let you know how this worked.
Tessa Murry (07:12.843)
my God, I know you Ruben, now that you have this new tool, you’re not gonna wait a decade to check this thing. You’re gonna be checking it like what, monthly? At least annually.
Reuben Saltzman (07:19.694)
Well, there’s nothing else to check. With this powered anode rod, it’s not a sacrificial anode rod where it depletes. It’s just this thing that sends an electrical charge.
Tessa Murry (07:26.7)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (07:31.565)
okay. Well, we got a five very interesting. Okay, so it’s got a 10 year warranty on it then.
Reuben Saltzman (07:39.022)
20 years.
Tessa Murry (07:41.156)
my gosh. Wow. Can I ask, did you buy this anode rod from just like a home, like a regular store that anybody can go to and get it? Or did you have to get it from a special supplier?
Reuben Saltzman (07:43.234)
Yeah. So.
Reuben Saltzman (07:53.58)
I got it on Amazon. The name of it was called Coral Protect as in short for Corrosion Protect. But it’s P-R-O-T-E-C. I just Googled powered anode rod and it was the first thing that came up and it had a lot of really good reviews. So.
Tessa Murry (08:00.535)
Protect. Okay.
Tessa Murry (08:07.883)
Really? How much does it cost?
Reuben Saltzman (08:12.238)
160 bucks.
Tessa Murry (08:14.733)
Wow. Okay, that’s a smart investment, I think. you can get an extra 10 years out of your water heater up there in Maple Grove, why not?
Reuben Saltzman (08:16.408)
Yeah, not cheap.
Reuben Saltzman (08:22.164)
If it does that, absolutely. Yeah, but we’ll wait and see. So we’ll revisit this. the point is I had a four year old water heater, anode rod was completely gone. And now I’m on a mission to have everybody at StructureTech borrow my tool and test check their own anode rods.
Tessa Murry (08:26.317)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (08:42.093)
What?
Reuben Saltzman (08:45.9)
I already went over to my dad’s house. checked his, his was a nine year old water heater in St. Louis park and he didn’t even have a wire stick remaining. His was completely gone. So he installed a powered anode rod in his water heater and I’m going to make the rounds with everybody on the team. So, yeah.
Tessa Murry (08:51.5)
Yeah.
Wow!
Tessa Murry (09:04.791)
fascinating. There’s going to be an exciting blog with lots of data in it after this, I think.
Reuben Saltzman (09:10.83)
I hope so. I hope so. Yep.
Tessa Murry (09:14.477)
Here’s a quick question for you. Do they make mini ones so you can have a little on-demand water heater and not have flooding issues anymore?
Reuben Saltzman (09:24.258)
Tessa, that would be great, but no, they don’t. The anode rod, you need to take the whole thing apart to get at it. So unfortunately, no, but that would be great if they did. I would love that. Yeah, yeah.
Tessa Murry (09:35.168)
Okay.
little mini ones. Yeah. Yeah. my goodness. you’re so what are you’re gonna have to find other other uses for this special tool you have now Ruben you’ve you’ve made it to you know, 40 something years of your life without it. Now it’s changed your life. What are you going to do with it?
Reuben Saltzman (09:54.19)
I’m going to start changing car tires and that’s the only other thing I can think of. Sorry.
Tessa Murry (10:01.159)
I was wondering what other uses that tool has because if you’ve made it this long you don’t have one then you probably don’t really need one
Reuben Saltzman (10:08.726)
I don’t really need one, you know, Tessa, let me ask you this. Would you rather have one and not need it or need it and not have it? There, I gotcha. You can’t argue with that logic.
Tessa Murry (10:17.111)
you
Tessa Murry (10:22.797)
I’d rather know someone who has one. you go.
Reuben Saltzman (10:26.232)
Well, you know me Tess, the only problem is you live in Red Wing now.
Tessa Murry (10:30.285)
It’s true, it’s true, and I rent, so there’s that. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (10:34.306)
Yeah, there is that. Yeah. All right. Well, that’s, that’s all I had today. Tess, anything else going on in your world? How is the home diagnostics and inspections going for you?
Tessa Murry (10:47.539)
Yeah, so it’s really interesting. I’ve had some different people reach out recently. And I’m going to be going out to someone’s house who has had problems with ice dams in the past. And they’ve done their due diligence trying to figure out ways to stop the ice dams. They recently had a new roof put on. And after talking to different contractors,
they decided to go with a metal roof so they didn’t have issues with water intrusion anymore. And they did a special roof decking where they made sure they had proper ventilation under the whole roof deck and everything. I don’t know all the details yet, but they put on this new roof and this is the first winter that they’ve lived in the house with this roof. And he’s noticing condensation forming underneath.
in the attic space now that they never used to have problems up there before this metal roof. And so the first cold slap we had this winter so far, he’s having new and different moisture issues and he’s trying to figure out what’s going on and what do I do about it. So that should be an interesting one.
Reuben Saltzman (11:47.277)
Mmm.
Reuben Saltzman (11:59.704)
Well, I’m anxious to hear how that turns out. We need to circle back on that and figure out what you find. Yeah. But like I promised, this was going to be a short podcast, very short one.
Tessa Murry (12:04.109)
Stay tuned. Yeah, stay tuned.
Reuben Saltzman (12:11.214)
If anyone’s got any questions, any thoughts on their own anode rods, if you’ve done this yourself, I’d love to hear how long your own has lasted for. And I’m going to be compiling a lot of data on this and sharing it. So please email us. Our email is podcast at structuretech.com. I am Ruben Saltzman for Tessa Marie signing off. Thanks for tuning in. Later.