Do ceiling fans actually cool down rooms? No! They only cool people. Reuben and Tessa explain how this works, while Bill grumbles about how he still likes running fans all over his house while he’s not home. In the sustainable urban core.
The gang also discusses the misconceptions that more insulation is always better, high-efficiency furnaces are always better, and new windows are a smart investment.
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is a transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be slightly incomplete or contain minor inaccuracies due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Bill Oelrich: There’s a burr under somebody’s saddle about a ceiling fan.
Tessa Murry: Reuben gets really whipped up about it.
Reuben Saltzman: I do. I get whipped up about this. It’s a good way of putting it, Tessa. I get angry.
[music]
BO: Welcome everybody to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name is Bill Oelrich alongside my guest host, as always Tessa Murry with Structure Tech Home Inspections, Reuben Saltzman with Structure Tech Home Inspections. And on today’s episode, we are gonna talk about some home improvement myths.
RS: Fun stuff.
BO: Yeah. So this isn’t home inspection myths, these are home improvement myths.
RS: Exactly.
TM: Yeah.
BO: So Reuben, why is this top of mind for you?
RS: Well, these are the things that we hear repeated from people all the time. I may or may not even get into some of these discussions with my wife. And she doesn’t listen to the podcast anyway. So we’re safe talking about this. [chuckle] But this is about the ceiling fan deal. Let’s get right into that.
BO: Ceiling fans?
RS: Or should we tease it and wait till the very end of the podcast or should we talk about it now?
TM: No, you’re going into it, go into it.
BO: Apparently, there’s a burr under somebody’s saddle about a ceiling fan.
TM: Reuben gets really gets whipped up about it.
RS: I do. I get whipped up about this. It’s a good way of putting it, Tessa. I get angry. Can I stand? Can I move this mic so I can stand up while I talk about this?
BO: Wow did you put your hands in the air and get bite by a blade by a ceiling fan?
RS: No, the idea is that, when air moves, it therefore cools down.
TM: Like the temperature, the air temperature will drop just based on movement.
RS: Yes.
TM: Okay.
RS: Yes, exactly.
TM: Wait, that’s not true.
RS: Tessa, alright, you’re the building scientist. Let me just kinda set the stage. What drives me nuts is a fan running in a room when I’m not home. If you’re not there, shut the fan off. It’s not doing any good. And there’s this idea that because the air’s moving, it’s gonna cool the room down. And I don’t know. I’m just a lowly home inspector. Tessa, you’re the building scientist. Maybe, you can shed some light on this.
TM: Oh, man, that’s a lot of pressure. I don’t wanna be the cause of a fight between…
RS: No, no, no, you don’t need to get in the middle of any type of argument. I just want you to explain to me how moving air makes your skin feel colder.
TM: Yeah.
RS: You can do that, right? Okay.
TM: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, why a human might feel like a ceiling fan cools them off?
RS: Yes.
TM: Yeah.
RS: And it does to be fair.
TM: It does. Well, the air movement will allow that moisture on your skin to evaporate and the evaporation is what cools the temperature of your skin off. So yeah, so a fan, the air movement might feel cool because of that but it’s not gonna drop the actual air temperature just by movement. The fan will not make the room temperature cooler.
RS: Yeah, so if you’ve got a room and you’ve got a fan going in it all day. Is it gonna change the temperature at all?
TM: No.
RS: Okay.
TM: And I wonder if it could actually… If the fan moving could actually increase the temperature if the fan got really hot?
RS: That is a fact. There’s a wonderful article online.
TM: You’ve done research?
BO: You could see me rolling my eyes right now ’cause…
RS: No, it’s a fact. You have a motor and motors give off heat.
TM: Yeah.
BO: And heat rises so it goes right into the attic into your second floor of bedroom. [laughter]
RS: Tessa and I just exchanged a look when you said heat rises.
TM: I know.
RS: That’s another myth. We’ll get to that myth later on. It’s on our list of things to talk about, right?
TM: Yeah.
RS: Dadadada, Bill?
BO: Your room is still gonna be more comfortable with your fan running.
RS: While you’re in it. While you’re in it. So the point is, when you’re in the room, go ahead and turn your fan on. And I love fans.
TM: I do too.
RS: Don’t get me wrong. Just when I leave the room, I shut the fan off.
TM: Yeah.
RS: It’s just like a light. I like lights too.
TM: Yeah, yeah.
RS: But once I leave the room, I shut it off.
BO: So Reuben, can I ask you a question? Do you run your furnace fan continuously when you leave your house during the heating season?
RS: No, I don’t run my furnace fan continuously at all. I have one of those Sense home energy monitors. And I’ve got kind of an older furnace. It’s… I don’t know, maybe 18 years old. And I can see my power usage just skyrocket…
BO: Oh, okay.
RS: When my furnace’s blower fan kicks on. That’s a lot. It’s 600 watts or something.
BO: Okay.
TM: What is that in terms of dollars? Have you calculated that?
RS: When we take a break, I could check it out.
TM: Oh, yeah.
BO: Of course, he can.
RS: And this Sense home energy app will tell me exactly what it cost for a year.
TM: Of course, he can.
RS: I’ve got it on my fingertips.
TM: Okay.
RS: But not…
TM: Yeah, yeah, not in your head.
RS: I don’t have it committed to memory.
TM: Yeah.
RS: So I can tell you. It does cost a fair amount of energy to keep that fan running.
BO: For your old inefficient motor.
RS: For my old inefficient motor.
TM: It’s not a ECM motor or a…
RS: Exactly, the newer motors, the new furnace motors that are much more efficient are an ECM motor.
BO: What does ECM stand for?
TM: I can’t remember.
BO: Electrically Commutated… Something like that…
RS: Commutated motor.
TM: Yeah.
BO: Starts with a…
RS: We’ll go with that. We don’t know what we’re talking about.
TM: It’s a modulating, a modulating motor. It modulates.
BO: But it runs off DC. It’s basically, it’s a very low voltage that runs that motor. Anyway, it’s like the fan that’s currently running in my bedroom right now that’s making a beautiful oscillating motion and noise.
RS: But somebody’s there to appreciate this, right?
BO: Nobody’s there, no, the door’s shut and nobody’s there.
RS: Haaaa.
[laughter]
BO: But when I walk in my bedroom… When I walk in my bedroom tonight, when I get home or whatever, the room is more comfortable than if the fan is not running. It is.
TM: Define more comfortable. How is it more comfortable?
BO: The air isn’t stratified. There’s not that cold spot out by the wall. And it’s warm over here.
TM: It’s mixing, mixing…
BO: It’s all mixed up. The solution to pollution is dilution.
RS: Don’t you think you could fix all that with turning the fan on 60 seconds before you walk in the room?
BO: Well, maybe.
RS: Okay.
BO: But, it’s virtually no electricity to run this little fan, that it’s nothing. Yes, there’s electricity there but less electricity to run that fan than the light bulb on that’s currently in the alley that never gets shut off either, so. Reuben has taken a deeper…
RS: Okay, alright. Tessa, I can’t reach Bill, will you pat him on the head for me? [laughter] Thank you.
BO: Let’s get back to this hot motor and this fan that’s causing all this problem for Reuben. And…
RS: No, it’s not really gonna warm up the room.
BO: Okay.
RS: But, if you had a finely calibrated instrument, technically it does add heat to the room. It doesn’t remove heat, it adds it.
BO: Okay, I’ll agree with that. And we’re talking about ceiling fans. So we’re not talking about a little fan that runs off hardly any electricity. You’re talking about a ceiling fan that’s got a motor in, that does heat up and it’s not real efficient.
RS: Yeah, it’s not really gonna make any difference.
BO: Okay.
RS: You’re saying, technically that’s what it’s gonna do.
BO: Okay.
RS: It’s gonna add heat, not remove it. That’s all.
BO: Alright, so everybody we’re talking about ceiling fans, not the little one I’m talking about. Okay, so now that Reuben’s heart rate is up to about 240, we’re gonna take a rest here.
RS: I think it is…
BO: We’re gonna step away for just a second. And when we come back we’re gonna dive into more home improvement myths. You’ve been listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation.
[music]
BO: Hey everybody. Bill Oelrich here with Structure Talk. You know at Structure Tech, we do a ton of home inspections. Mostly when people are buying houses, we get in with the buyers right after they sign the contract. But homeowners, if you’ve got an issue inside your home, we can come out and do something we call a “Single-Item Inspection”. We can kind of help you get to the bottom of some of these weird little things that show up in your house from time to time. And, as we move towards summer, that’s when the thunderstorm start heating up. If you ever wanna have your roof looked at after a nasty storm, you can always give us a call. Check us out at Structure Tech.com or just call our office 952-915-6466.
BO: Welcome back everybody. You’re listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name is Bill Oelrich, alongside Tessa Murry and Reuben Saltzman. And on today’s episode we’re talking about home improvement myths. And pulse rates are back to normal, breathing has resumed so let’s get back into more myths here, and see if we can get you going again, Reuben.
RS: Let’s do it.
BO: Adding more insulation is always a good thing.
RS: Well, that’s gonna get Tessa going, right?
TM: Yeah. You’d think that I’d be an advocate for that, or you’d think that I would say that that can’t be a myth, right? Working in the energy world for as long as I did, the solution is always “Add more insulation”, right? But sometimes, it can do more harm than good.
BO: Why?
TM: Let’s say you take an old house, and maybe there’s knob-and-tube in the walls. What happens when you blow in more insulation in the walls?
BO: You put more insulation in the wall.
TM: And you bury the knob-and-tube wiring.
RS: You can disturb it. And that stuff was rated to be installed in free air. It was never supposed to be enclosed. It’s supposed to be able to dissipate heat very easily.
TM: Mm-hmm.
RS: And now you, insulate all around it and it’s not gonna dissipate the heat like it’s supposed to.
BO: So, can I ask the obvious question? I guess, I am. If this is a known problem, why is it even allowed? Like, wouldn’t there be some city ordinance that says, “Yeah as much as we wanna make that old house wall more insulated, we can’t do it because there could be knob-and-tube in there. Unless, you prove it’s not there you can’t do it.”
TM: That would be overreaching of the city to tell you, “You can’t add an insulation in your wall, because you might…
TM: Might create it.
RS: Have knob-and-tube wiring.
BO: Okay, alright.
RS: That would be way overreaching from the government end.
TM: Lots of regulations, yeah. I mean, there might be some more awareness if we see that happen more, and there are problems as a result of that.
BO: Sure. Houses burning down.
TM: With this new wave of awareness that homeowners are gonna have about their walls being empty and wanting to insulate them. This might be a new potential problem we see happen more.
BO: Gotcha. So what other issues are with too much insulation?
TM: If you take an attic and you add more insulation, and you don’t do any air sealing, that can create problems. You can still have that warm air from the house that rise and leaks up through the attic bypasses. And then all that moisture and that warmth, will condense on the roof decking even more. ‘Cause when you add more insulation, now the attic temperature is gonna be colder than what it used to be before ’cause you’ve just got a thicker, thicker blanket between your house and your attic. And so that attic temperature will be even colder. So a colder surface is gonna have more potential for condensation on it.
BO: So what does leak through then…
TM: Can create more issues, yeah.
BO: So you get these like micro climates.
TM: Frost. Yeah, you can get frost in your attic. You can have enough frost build up that, when it does warm up outside, that frost will melt and people will get raining attics. Again and also too, if you blowing in a bunch more insulation, you don’t install proper shoots at the eve, to allow for airflow, to come up from the eve and in the attic you can actually block off that airflow, too. So, if you have an insulation contractor come out and they just blow in a bunch of insulation, they can prevent that attic ventilation that you once had. So it can create some issues.
RS: Yeah. Not only that but, I’ve done a lot of attic inspections for people. Just troubleshooting inspections figuring out why they’ve got ice stems or frost in the attic, after they’ve already added all the insulation.
TM: Added… Yeah.
RS: Because it’s like all of a sudden, and they say, “I never had any issues until I had this insulation, and now it’s worse. It’s just like what we’re talking about, Tessa. And the big challenge here is that, now it’s just about impossible for me to find these bypasses ’cause they’re like “Yeah I want it all 60.
TM: Right.
RS: You’ve got two feet of insulation that you gotta climb through.
TM: You’ve got someone who’s wading through, like three feet of insulation trying to find a little attic bypass and now it’s impossible. So you actually would have been better off just not adding the insulation, doing the air sealing, doing the bend shoots, and then blowing a little bit more in after that.
RS: Yeah. It makes it much more difficult to fix what’s sitting underneath it, once you’ve got two more feet to swim through.
TM: Yeah, exactly, yeah.
BO: Alright, so insulation swimming is not a sport that you’re interested in.
[laughter]
RS: It’s really miserable.
BO: Moving on here. Alright. So, myth number what… We’ll call it three. All houses should have high efficiency appliances or furnaces, okay, well, heat plans.
TM: Oh furnaces. High efficiency furnaces. Yeah, well in theory, it sounds like a great idea. You’re installing a furnace that’s more energy efficient, so you’re gonna save money, right?
BO: Yes.
TM: In heating, and all of that. But, if you have a high efficiency furnace, and it’s installed where both the intake and the exhaust pipe are ducted directly to the exterior, to the outside…
RS: And that’s like nine out of 10 at least.
TM: Nine out of 10, yeah. Then that… The whole dynamic of how your house works is gonna change. The pressures in the house, the air quality in the house. So, old furnaces would use air from the room… Air from the house, for combustion. So that provides this like, natural air exchange in your house. As your furnace uses that oxygen, and uses that air more fresh air from the outside gets pulled in, through combustion air intake or gaps in the building envelope and it… You know, reduces the pollutants in the house, right? It eliminates the moisture in the house, it eliminate smells. You’ve got this natural air exchange happening when the furnace runs. But you put in a high efficiency furnace, and you have an intake and exhaust pipe directly connected to the furnace. Now that furnace is pulling air directly from the outside, and it’s exhausting into the outside. And it’s not using any of the air from the house, or any of the air from the room.
TM: So, you’re not getting that natural air exchange. So, I’ve seen a lot of people, where a standard house, and they had an old furnace, and they replaced with high efficiency and now all of a sudden, they have all this condensation on their windows in the winter time that they never used to have, or they complain about smell sticking around in the house longer than they used to, or having air quality issues, or mold problems. And it’s because they put in a high efficiency furnace and it changed the whole dynamic of the house.
RS: So, just simply upgrading to a high efficiency furnace is not always a good thing to do. I mean, we like high efficiency furnaces, but the heating contractor needs to be an HVAC contractor.
TM: AC… Heating, ventilating air conditioning. Yeah, it’s building science.
RS: Wait, Tessa, we’ll slip in our joke here. What happens when you eliminate the v you have a.
TM: Heating contractor.
TM: A hac.
RS: [laughter] When they’re not considering the ventilations.
BO: Please direct all comments to Reuben at… [laughter]
RS: I thought you knew that one, sorry, I thought you were gonna finish the joke for me.
TM: [chuckle] No I’ve never heard of that, it’s a new one. Sorry Reuben, I left you hanging there. But it’s not saying that high efficiency furnaces are bad, it’s just realizing that upgrading from an older furnace to a new furnace can impact air quality and moisture in a house. So you need to think about the big picture and maybe you need to install another bath fan, or you need to install an HRV, or an ERV system, or something else to provide some sort of ventilation for the house.
BO: Gotcha. All right, I think we have time for one more here before we cruise on off to a break. “New windows will pay for themselves.” Myth number four: “New windows will pay for themselves.”
RS: Oh my gosh, and this is the hack window salesman’s tack where they tell people, “You need new windows. Over time, after five, 10 years or whatever, they’ll pay for themselves with all the energy savings.” That’s just the biggest lump of…
TM: Crap.
RS: Crap, we’ll go with that. That’s the worst salesman’s tact they use ’cause it’s completely garbage. There’s absolutely no way a window will ever pay for itself no matter how many years you have.
TM: It’ll take a lifetime to see a return on investment, in terms of energy savings.
RS: Yeah, you won’t even break even. You look at what windows… How much energy they lose. They do lose energy.
TM: They do.
RS: But you upgrade all of your windows and you’re probably not even gonna see a difference in your energy bill. Maybe a little bit…
TM: Maybe a little.
RS: But not a lot.
TM: Here’s the thing, you’re going from a standard window… Let’s say you’ve got a single pane window, maybe that’s an R1, and that’s a measurement for how resistive to heat transfer a material is, so an R1 is very low resistance, which means you’re gonna have a lot of heat loss through that glass, right? Now let’s say you spend thousands of dollars and you upgrade to a double pane gas-filled window. Now you’ve got an R3 [chuckle] so you multiply the surface area from an R1 to an R3. And let’s say you’re saving R2 over a certain surface area and now you’ve spent thousands of dollars. How long is it gonna take to see that return on increasing the percentage of R-value by 2%?
RS: Yeah, and considering how much of your wall do these windows actually make up? I mean, what are you changing? And just to be clear, when you’re saying R-value; I mean that’s a number everybody knows. For a window they technically have a different term called the U-value.
TM: U-value. Yeah, thank you.
RS: And when you say thousands, typically it’s not thousands per window but we’re talking tens of thousands when you redo a house.
TM: Yeah, all of the windows. If you really wanna save money on energy, remove that window and don’t put a new window in. Make it a wall [laughter] and insulate it to an R20. [chuckle] There you go, that’s your energy savings right there.
BO: “Hey honey, here’s your new bay-wall. I hope you enjoy it.” [laughter]
TM: Exactly. Yeah.
RS: That’s a good term. No, but if you wanna save on energy go for the low hanging fruit. If you have single pane windows, and you wanna take the low option, put on storm windows.
TM: Storm windows, yeah. That’s a good option.
RS: That’s gonna give you the biggest bang for your buck on a single pane window. Tessa when was the last time you inspected a Minnesota home with single pane windows, or have you ever?
TM: Yeah, there’s a lot of old houses in Minneapolis or St. Paul that might still have a single pane window. But most of them have a storm window on the outside, which…
RS: That’s what I mean. Single pane without a storm.
TM: Okay, without a storm? Hardly ever.
RS: Yeah, it’s rare.
TM: Yeah, and with that storm, it behaves just like a double pane window almost.
RS: Yeah, it’s not as good as a sealed gas double pane but it’s not a huge difference.
TM: Not a huge difference, no.
RS: Yeah, there’s still big holes in your insulation wall or insulation enclosure.
BO: So that’s not low hanging fruit in the energy savings world?
RS: Upgrading from a single pane to a double pane is low hanging fruit. But the other stuff would be adding an attic insulation, upgrading your furnace…
TM: Air sealing.
RS: Air sealing, things like that. Those are the easier ones.
BO: Gotcha. Alright we’re gonna take a quick break but when we come back we’re gonna finish out this list of home improvement myths. You’ve been listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation.
BO: Hi everybody, Bill Oelrich here with Structure Talk. Are you a DIY-er? You want a great place to go get DIY information? Check out thefamilyhandyman.com. This website is full of videos, full of information, full of tips. It’s like a DIY-ers dream. The guys over at Family Handyman have tested just about every single item inside of a house. On their website there’s tons of videos, there’s tons of content, check them out. They’re a great resource for any DIY-er.
BO: Welcome back everybody. You’re listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name is Bill Oelrich, alongside Tessa Murray and Reuben Saltzman. On today’s episode we’re running through some home improvement myths, it gets this group pretty wound up, well at least the two to the left of me. So let’s jump into this. The Home Energy Squad’s gonna show up at your house and I’m not sure if that’s a thing; home energy people? We won’t call them a squad. The people come out and they’re gonna bring a bunch of CFL light bulbs with them. Is that a good idea?
TM: Do they bring CFLs anymore? They’ve probably moved onto LEDs, right?
RS: Probably. I hope.
TM: When I was doing that, we used to use CFLs but that was a while ago. I think they’ve gotten rid of those hopefully.
BO: Why hopefully? What’s wrong with the CFL?
TM: Reuben?
RS: Well, it was a transition technology. They never meant for CFLs to be a permanent thing that people were gonna be using. CFLs, for anybody… Everybody knows what that is, right? Compact Fluorescent Light.
TM: Compact Fluorescent Lights. The spirally looking ones.
RS: Yeah. The spiral bulbs, we all know what those are. And some of them were really crummy, where you’d flip it on and it’d take a minute for the light to really warm up and…
TM: It’d flicker for a while and…
RS: It’d be dim and eventually it’d brighten up over time. Those were just a transition technology. They were much more efficient than a traditional bulb. They weren’t fantastic. They’re no where near as efficient as LEDs. They take a while to warm up and then if you break em, what do you do with them? How do you get rid of them? They all need to be recycled. They all contain Mercury. I used to work at Home Depot and anytime something would break or spill you had to get the MSDS safety sheet; Material Safety Data Safety sheet, something like that. You had to get the sheet and the requirements for a broken florescent bulb are crazy. It’s like you gotta quarantine the area [laughter]
TM: Because of the mercury.
RS: You’ve got to carefully sweep it up while you’re wearing this type of mask and use a HEPA vacuum and then use tape to get the shards or something like that. I mean it’s crazy what you’ve got to do. Who does that in a home? What do you do if you break a bulb? You sweep it up and you put in your garbage. There’s a lot of contamination. Just imagine the, probably, millions of bulbs getting tossed out.
BO: Sounds good. So CFL bulbs are not the answer to our light efficiency woes. So do dimers actually save electricity or save energy?
TM: I don’t know.
BO: A couple of raised eyebrows and nobody knows. So we’re going to move on. Who cares? Alright, so the most controversial issue of the day, heat rises. Tell us about heat rising and why is that a home owner improvement myth, Tessa?
TM: Well, it’s not heat that rises. Warm air will rise. Warm air is less dense. So as it rises, the cold air is more dense, it will fall and push the warmer air up. So it’s kind of this convective loop happening.
BO: Is that what is happening by those old single pane windows without a storm on them? Is it a heat rise and fall thing going on?
TM: There’s a couple different things happening, probably, what you’re feeling, if you feel cold next to an old window.
BO: Are they drafty or are they something else?
TM: Well, a lot of times they are, yes. So you can actually have, let’s say it’s a windy day, maybe you’re feeling some of that air leaking in through. So that’s one thing. But you can also have that, basically, as the warm air cools down, it’ll fall. And so when that air hits the window, it’s gonna cool down. It’s gonna fall. So you might get a little micro-looping, convective looping, right next to a window. But you’re also gonna have radiant heat loss to a window. You’re gonna lose your own body heat to that object and you’re gonna feel like it’s cold because of that. So you could have convection and radiation and all those things happening by a window that makes it feel cooler.
RS: To just switch it a little on the topic of convection. I wanted to bring up something. There was a Q&A topic that we never got to on one of our past Q&A sessions where somebody had asked about ghosting. And this is where you go, typically it’s an older home, and you look at the ceiling and sometimes even on the walls and you can see little dark marks of where the wall studs are or where the roof trusses are. You can see this little outline of them.
TM: It’s like a little shadow.
RS: Yeah, it’s like a little shadow and people have asked, “What is that all about?” Tessa, you wanna take this one.
TM: Sure. Well, where you have that wood framing, you don’t have as much insulation as you do in the wall cavity next to it. So that spot, you’re going to have a lot more heat loss happening through that wood framing than you do through the cavity that’s insulated. And it’s called thermal bridging, when you lose heat through that framing member. So when it’s really warm inside and cold outside, you’re losing that heat through that framing and that spot becomes colder than the area around it. So it’s more likely to have condensation form on that cold spot. And if you’ve got soot or dust in the air or if you burn candles or whatnot, then that can stick to those cold surfaces, that cold surface area. You’ve got the framing members. So you can actually get this outline of where all the framing is on your exterior walls or your ceiling, if it’s a cold spot, because there’s no insulation there.
RS: So does this indicate a problem with the house?
TM: It indicates an area that doesn’t have any insulation? A lot of times it’s an area where you can’t really easily get to and you can’t insulate it and I wouldn’t say it’s a problem at all.
RS: Got it.
TM: Yeah. Would you say it’s a problem?
RS: No.
BO: There’s a difference in temperature between two surfaces or two materials.
TM: Yeah.
RS: It’s just building science.
TM: It’s heat loss, basically. And there’s not a whole lot you can, typically, do to improve it. In a lot of older houses, if it’s happening at the corner where the wall meets the ceiling, those are spots you really can’t get into and add more insulation. If it’s happening in a spot where you can get more insulation, well then you can fix it.
RS: I’d say what you could do about this is wash your wall. There, now you don’t see it anymore.
TM: Burn less candles.
BO: Oh my goodness. Now we’re going to have a robust conversation about something. “Wash your wall? What are you talking about?”
RS: Just take a rag and wipe off the marks. That it. That’s all.
BO: It’s never going to look clean after you do that. You need to paint it.
RS: Oh, stop it.
TM: Yeah, actually.
BO: Okay. I’m gonna challenge you to go home today after this and wipe down your kitchen wall and see what it looks like after you’re done.
RS: Alright, I’ll take pictures.
BO: You will be painting the wall.
TM: You just had that painted, too, Ruben. You may not want to do it right in the kitchen. Choose a basement wall.
RS: Alright. Yeah, I’ll check it out.
BO: Alright. So that’s going be a wrap on this. You’ve been listening to, Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. We’ll catch you next time.
Author: Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections
