To watch a video version of this podcast, click here: https://youtu.be/2cNHgOFCes0
In this episode of the Structure Talk podcast, hosts Reuben Saltzman and Tessa Murry engage with listener questions, discuss the growth of their inspection team, and share insights into their training process. They also highlight an upcoming conference for home inspectors and delve into specific home maintenance topics, including rim joist insulation. The conversation emphasizes the importance of communication, training, and adapting to clients’ needs in the home inspection industry. They also discuss various topics related to home improvement, including building codes, plumbing issues, and the pros and cons of recessed lighting. They provide insights into safety standards, troubleshooting plumbing problems, and the differences between drum traps and P-traps. The conversation also touches on energy efficiency and listener engagement for future topics.
Takeaways
Reuben enjoys answering listener questions despite mixed responses.
The podcast is now available on YouTube for viewers.
Spring is a busy season for home inspections.
New inspectors with real estate backgrounds are now on the team.
Training focuses on both technical skills and client communication.
A blog post detailing the training process will be available soon.
The company has successfully grown despite challenges from COVID-19.
An upcoming conference will feature networking and learning opportunities.
Pickleball and casino night are fun activities planned for the conference.
Spray foam insulation is a recommended method for rim joist insulation. Building codes require ignition barriers for exposed foam in habitable areas.
Drum traps can be challenging to remove, but there are effective methods.
Replacing a drum trap with a P-trap depends on the plumbing configuration.
Recessed lights can cause drafts and heat loss if not installed properly.
Wafer down lights are a better alternative to traditional recessed lights.
Proper attic ventilation is crucial when installing ceiling fixtures.
Homeowners should consider maintaining drum traps to avoid clogs.
Using a hair catcher can prevent plumbing issues in bathtubs.
Listener feedback is encouraged for future podcast topics.
The hosts are open to discussing various home improvement topics.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Listener Engagement
02:55 Team Growth and New Inspectors
06:02 Training Process Insights
09:05 Upcoming Conference and Networking Opportunities
11:57 Home Inspection Questions and Answers
15:04 Rim Joist Insulation Discussion
22:02 Understanding Building Codes and Safety Standards
23:01 Troubleshooting Plumbing Issues
27:13 Drum Traps vs. P-Traps: What Homeowners Should Know
31:41 Recessed Lighting: Pros and Cons
40:18 Future Topics and Listener Engagement
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 (00:02.156)
Welcome back to the structure talk podcast. We’re here again tessa. What are we doing today?
Tessa Murry (00:09.584)
doing this is actually part three of responding or discussing I should say questions that people listeners have written in with and actually shouldn’t even say listeners people that Google answers to their house questions and find your blogs and then they write to you
Reuben Saltzman (00:27.352)
Yes, yes. And I answer them. And you know what’s weird to us? I know this isn’t gonna totally surprise you. I will take all this time. I’ll even research, like, you know, I mentioned last week about how, you know, gotta get back to Scott, figure out what’s the height that you measure from. I’ll reply to people. I’ll give them a good answer. I get a response like, thank you. About half the time. The other half of the time, I get nothing.
Tessa Murry (00:48.849)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (00:57.4)
Like, I don’t know if my email went to spam or people just read it and they’re like, yep, he deserved to answer my question or what, but it’s half the time it is very unsatisfying, but I can’t, I can’t help myself. I got to answer. And you know what? Whether people, you know, whether they give you the thanks or not, it’s always helpful for me to answer these. I mean, cause a lot of the time I’ll have to kind of dig in and I’ll have to get.
Tessa Murry (01:00.163)
Alright.
Tessa Murry (01:07.291)
Well…
my gosh.
Reuben Saltzman (01:25.748)
answers that I didn’t have. I’ll have to do a little bit of research. That’s kind of like blogging. I mean, you got to do research to figure this stuff out. I don’t know all the stuff just right off the top of my head. But then once you’ve written about it, once you’ve taken the time to answer questions, it’s like it kind of cements it a little bit more in your head. So it helps you stay fresh. So it’s like, okay, it’s an exercise. It’s fun.
Tessa Murry (01:29.308)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (01:38.79)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (01:51.132)
Well, you’re a better person than I am. If I took all that time, my own personal time to research and respond to people and record my back, I can’t believe only 50 % of the time they just say thanks. Wild. What is this world coming to?
Reuben Saltzman (02:05.134)
I know I know I can’t either well test before we before we get into the show more questions What’s new with you anything to share? What’s going on in the world with Tessa?
Tessa Murry (02:18.739)
What’s new well, this is actually a video podcast So we’ll just make that quick announcement is if anyone’s tuning in and they didn’t listen to the last one I want to before we are now posting our podcast on YouTube aren’t we Ruben? So if you’d rather watch our faces Which warning? We’ve got the faces for radio not for podcast you can watch we’ll see how it’s going but
Reuben Saltzman (02:25.571)
Yes.
Reuben Saltzman (02:31.254)
Yeah, we are. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (02:41.08)
We do.
Tessa Murry (02:46.67)
Yeah, this is actually we’re recording this one back to back with the last one So if you’re wondering why we’re in the same clothes, it’s not that we wear the same outfit every day You’re like mr. Rogers you all have your claws in it it’s just black structure tech t-shirts
Reuben Saltzman (02:55.768)
Well, speak for yourself.
Reuben Saltzman (03:05.314)
That’s there. I’m going to share a photo next week. You’re going to see how funny that is because that’s exactly what it is. Yes, they’re all identical.
Tessa Murry (03:14.82)
That’s good. That’s good. Well, you know, nothing too new, I guess. I’m going to be traveling for Easter and visiting friends and family and lots of fun stuff and eating lots of good food, maybe doing some little egg hunts with nephews. So I’m looking forward to that. Yeah. Yeah. How about you? Anything new in your life?
Reuben Saltzman (03:35.822)
fun.
Reuben Saltzman (03:40.012)
Okay. All right.
Not a whole lot. nope. It’s a life is life is good. Nothing, nothing new. Just kind of coasting along. It’s a busy season for home inspections and we’re just trying to trying to keep up with everything. That’s all.
Tessa Murry (03:54.022)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (04:03.088)
was going to say, is the spring market in the Twin Cities, is it strong? it, there’s a lot of, yeah. That’s great. Well, and can we get an update on some of the new inspectors that you’ve hired recently in the training? Are they done with the training process? Have you grown the team? Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (04:07.662)
It feels like it. It feels like it. Yeah, we’re definitely busy.
Reuben Saltzman (04:19.552)
Yeah. Yeah, they’re done with training. got Edward and Martin are both out in the field now. They you know, it’s the first time I think I’ve mentioned on the podcast. It’s the first time we’ve hired a previous real estate agent, but they they were both real estate agents. So they both got the real estate background. And, you know, I I’m pretty darn happy with it. I mean, they really know how to talk to clients. They
Tessa Murry (04:27.333)
Nice.
Tessa Murry (04:33.702)
Young
Tessa Murry (04:38.832)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (04:48.369)
I bet.
Reuben Saltzman (04:48.718)
really have a good understanding of the whole transaction. They appreciate what it takes to get to the point of maybe I’m going to buy a house to I have an accepted purchase agreement and now I’m having a home inspection. They understand that whole process and they understand the gravity of it. It’s like the home inspector isn’t supposed to be the gatekeeper like, oh, I’m going to let you buy this house or not. It’s not our job. Our job is to tell people about the house.
Tessa Murry (04:53.403)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (05:03.492)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (05:17.902)
And they do a very good job of that. And they’re both already getting rave reviews from people, even as brand new home inspectors. So they’re turning out great. I love having both of those guys on the team. Yep. It’s good.
Tessa Murry (05:18.629)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (05:25.719)
Well, that’s wonderful.
Tessa Murry (05:31.042)
that’s awesome.
Tessa Murry (05:35.098)
You know, I think when we were doing, you know, when we were working on the training program at Structure Tech and I was helping out with that, think, you know, you can always teach people the technical stuff. You know, you can have them read books and, you know, learn things. But when it comes to the bedside manner and all the stuff you just described of like having empathy for the people and understanding the process, that’s something that’s hard to teach. So it’s nice that they came with that.
that experience under their belts already.
Reuben Saltzman (06:05.844)
Absolutely. Yeah, they’re both very good at that. And that’s what we always said, you know, we hire for personality. Chris, you had both in spades. You had both in spades.
Tessa Murry (06:10.14)
Cool.
Tessa Murry (06:15.472)
That’s how you hired me. I had no technical skills.
I didn’t know anything about I didn’t know anything about plumbing or electrical stuff like nothing so that
Reuben Saltzman (06:31.84)
You were a very quick study. It was very easy for you to learn all that. Okay, maybe it wasn’t easy for you to learn. It was easy for us to teach you. Let’s put it that way. You picked it up like a pro.
Tessa Murry (06:34.428)
Tessa Murry (06:42.906)
Well, it’s a great team of people at StructureTech. Let me just say that amazing people and everybody had a lot of patience and answered all my dumb questions for a long time. So thank you.
Reuben Saltzman (06:54.326)
Yeah, and and by the way, if you’re curious about what our training process looks like by the time this podcast airs I will have posted a blog post on the structure tech training process Where I kind of dive into exactly what our training process looks like I recorded a 17 minute video that almost could have been a podcast But it really would have just been me monologuing. So I just I had a video with
Tessa Murry (07:10.043)
Mmm.
Reuben Saltzman (07:21.474)
with me talking to the camera, talking about what we do to train people. And it’s largely based on, you know, the whole program that you came up with back in 2020, the adult learning model. Let’s not go into any more of that. If you want to learn more about it, find that blog post. It’s just a week or two old at this point.
Tessa Murry (07:25.84)
Cool.
Tessa Murry (07:32.25)
Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (07:40.962)
Very cool. Well, congratulations. That’s awesome. How many inspectors are there now inspecting at StructureTech? Do you know? Yeah. It’s hard to keep track. Somewhere in there.
Reuben Saltzman (07:43.964)
Thanks, we got a whole bunch of them
More than a dozen, fewer than two dozen. I think, yeah, I think it was like 16 maybe, 16, 17, something like that, yeah.
Tessa Murry (07:57.304)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, congratulations. You know, COVID was difficult and there’s a lot of businesses that didn’t bounce back after that, but you’re still going strong and you’re growing. So kudos to you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (08:12.622)
Still working at it. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right, so we’re continuing on. our sponsors, thank you Tess. Yeah, always forget. Okay, our sponsors are IE is IEB, Inspector Empire Builder. And it’s a coaching group for home inspectors. The big thing we’re promoting right now is the conference coming up at the end of May. It’s gonna be May 28th.
Tessa Murry (08:19.484)
Do you need to do a shout out to the show sponsors real quick? We always forget
Reuben Saltzman (08:42.03)
through May 30th, it’s gonna be down in Texas. And it’s a fantastic conference. Tons of learning, tons of camaraderie, tons of getting to know similarly minded, growth minded home inspection company owners and a few things that’s gonna be covered. You know what, I’ll talk about the fun part. I just learned this isn’t published, excuse me, this isn’t published yet, but there’s going to be a pickleball tournament.
Tessa Murry (09:05.105)
Mm.
Reuben Saltzman (09:12.29)
How much fun will that be? And there’s also going to be a casino night. So I think people are supposed to really dress up or they’re gonna be doing blackjack and poker and roulette and craps. It’s gonna be run by a professional party called Just Like Vegas Casino Parties. Sounds like a blast. Attendees get a thousand chips.
Tessa Murry (09:14.619)
Nice.
Tessa Murry (09:27.268)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (09:36.238)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (09:40.552)
and they can win real prizes with raffle tickets and you’re supposed to come dressed in your Vegas glam. I don’t know what that means, but I suppose.
Tessa Murry (09:47.632)
wow. I don’t either. Something shiny? I don’t know. Alright.
Reuben Saltzman (09:51.694)
I suppose you get decked out. Remember the year where it was like, what was it? What did you go as? You were supposed to dress up as somebody and you, I wasn’t even there, but I heard about it, Tess.
Tessa Murry (10:05.304)
I can’t remember what the theme was. Was it like dress up as someone famous or? I don’t remember. Yeah. Are you referring to the one where I dressed up as you? I painted on a goatee. I had your sunglasses on, structure tech uniform.
Reuben Saltzman (10:15.362)
or doppelganger or something.
Yeah, you dressed up as me.
my gosh, I wish so bad I would have been there. Yeah, that’s hilarious. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (10:34.46)
It good. It was good. Well, hey, are you slightly disappointed? It’s pickleball and not paintball
Reuben Saltzman (10:41.416)
you know, slightly, slightly, but I think you’ll have a lot more people interested in doing pickleball. I mean, I even got you to go and come out and do pickleball for a structure tech event.
Tessa Murry (10:51.268)
It’s true. I, you know what? I do enjoy pickleball. It’s fun. It’s, there’s a lot of rules. That’s a little complicated for someone who’s never played tennis or pickleball before. It’s like, wait, what? but it’s fun. I enjoyed it. Yeah. I also appreciate not getting shot at. So.
Reuben Saltzman (11:05.11)
It is. Yeah, anybody can do it. I never got Tessa to come out and do paintball with us once, but.
Tessa Murry (11:15.556)
Yeah, I just, happen to be busy. Every time.
Reuben Saltzman (11:18.03)
You were never busy that is a bald-faced lie Tessa You didn’t want to play pick them up You chose not to yeah, I’m getting my nails done. What do you know?
Tessa Murry (11:23.194)
Yeah, I chose not to. I chose not to. Yeah.
I think I’ve had my nails done once in my life Yeah Mmm, not really Not really. I have been wearing more dresses these days though. I’ll tell you yes. Yeah, I don’t know what’s come over me It could be like the 80 90 degree weather, you know being hot all the time, but yes There’s a ship
Reuben Saltzman (11:33.921)
Hahaha!
Alright. Yeah, you’re not that kind of girly girl. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (11:48.643)
Have you?
Reuben Saltzman (11:57.996)
I’ll tell you what, if I was a girl and I lived in Florida, it seems like a dress would be really comfortable.
Tessa Murry (12:03.868)
You know, it’s nice not having to wear the 511 heavy cargo pants and a tool belt and climbing through attics Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. Okay, anyways should we get to the actual guts of the podcast No, what’s that?
Reuben Saltzman (12:10.446)
For sure, for sure, yeah.
All right. All right. We got a few questions we should probably get to. Tessa, did you ever listen to Love Line?
Reuben Saltzman (12:26.56)
Okay, was a show that was on way back in the day, back when I was in high school. And it would be on at like 10, 11 o’clock at night. It was a syndicated radio show with Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew. eventually, and it would be a radio show. Eventually it got turned into like an MTV show where they were on camera. But originally it was just a radio show and people would call in.
Tessa Murry (12:42.372)
Okay. okay. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (12:52.017)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (12:55.138)
with their questions about love and STDs and all these tough to tackle topics. And you’d have the doctor who’d give the real serious answers and then you’d have Adam Carolla for the comic relief. And I would love the show. I I spent my high school years listening to this without fail every time it was on. But as the show progressed, they would get to the point where they’d answer like one question throughout the whole show. I mean,
Tessa Murry (13:01.532)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (13:06.31)
Fair.
I’m sorry.
Tessa Murry (13:23.868)
I’m gonna do it.
Reuben Saltzman (13:24.322)
The producer would be like, you gotta take some calls. And they would never take calls. And they would just chit chat for almost the entire hour.
Tessa Murry (13:32.054)
I don’t know what you’re saying with this.
Reuben Saltzman (13:35.852)
That’s what we’re getting to. We’re just chit chat. We’re 15 minutes in. We have not answered a single question yet. That’s okay. Let’s take some questions tests.
Tessa Murry (13:42.364)
Let’s do at least one question. Should we dive into it?
Reuben Saltzman (13:46.784)
All right. All right. Yeah. Will you start us off? We got the question about the another one about rim joist insulation.
Tessa Murry (13:56.14)
Lots of questions about rim joist insulation. I believe in part one of this series we were talking about insulation in a like a 1920s house that had beam fill, correct? Okay. So this is question coming from someone who is looking for the best way to insulate between the joists at the rim in their 1931 house, our laundry rooms in the basement and it can get a bit chilly.
Reuben Saltzman (14:08.812)
Yeah. Yep.
Tessa Murry (14:25.51)
came across your blog article, quote, insulating a rim space, end quote, which was perfect. And you’re in Minnesota too. They’re in St. Paul. Anyway, I see the date of the article is 2011. And I just wanted to ask, has anything changed since then? In particular, is it OK to not put anything on the inside of the spray foam or rigid insulation according to Minnesota code? blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. OK, that’s their question.
Reuben Saltzman (14:52.93)
Yep. All right. What do you think Tess? How do you insulate a rim space? What’s the best way?
Tessa Murry (15:04.814)
Well, you know what my response automatically wants to be. Yes. Okay. So yeah, if we’re talking about like new construction house, you know, I’d say a spray foam is a good way to go. It air seals everything high R value per inch. I mean, I want to make sure you have a good installer do it. Foam is installed properly mixed right all of that jazz. If you’ve got an older house, like what we talked about in the previous podcast where you’ve got beam fill.
Reuben Saltzman (15:06.699)
It depends.
Tessa Murry (15:31.51)
or if your, your wood is encapsulated in concrete, like the joists are sitting embedded in concrete in between the joists, on top of the foundation wall. Well, then it gets a little bit trickier about if you should insulate it, how you should insulate it. And personally, we discussed this in depth last time, so I won’t go into it. but there’s potential for creating rot in the wood. If you.
Do some sort of spray foam over that rim joist in between the joist because you’re just reducing the drying potential that it used to have And all that moisture that wicks through the concrete and into the wood can’t can’t dry out So we don’t have any details about the type of house. is it’s 1931 We don’t know if there’s beam fill. We don’t know the condition of the joists so I always err on the side of caution like if you know if there’s a potential that
doing spray foam could impact the durability of the structure, then I’d say don’t do spray foam. It’s permanent. It’s tough to get out once you’ve put it in there. You can, but it’s difficult and I would much rather, this is a debate we talked about last time too, I’d much rather just take the energy penalty and the comfort challenges and have a solid structure that’s not going to rot.
But you can also use, they’re asking about rigid foam. Rigid foam can be cut and installed in between those joists. It’s just if you do that, you need to make sure that it’s airtight. And so you want to either foam around the perimeter of that so that it’s air sealed or caulk it. And that’s just very labor intensive. if you’ve got DIY-er and you’re OK doing that, that’s fine. And personally, you know.
Probably one of those two methods would be my preference because I react to fiberglass. I don’t know if you do, but if it if there’s exposed fiberglass on the rim joist over time, you know the fibers, the glass fibers get into the air, I think, and I can feel it when I’m in a basement that has exposed fiberglass. I can feel it my lungs. It irritates my throat and my lungs and I just think it impacts the air quality in a negative way. So if you’re sensitive,
Reuben Saltzman (17:31.278)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (17:51.036)
To fiberglass be cautious of that So I don’t know if there’s a there’s a great answer for this. I Didn’t really answer it. I gave you some pros and cons of each
Reuben Saltzman (17:59.022)
Yeah. Okay. I guess my answer was nothing has changed since 2011. mean, all things being equal. If you’re going to insulate a rim space, the only way to go is spray foam. It’s going to have the highest R value per inch. It’s going to seal up every little nook and cranny. I mean, nothing compares. It is by far the best way to do it. And that’s assuming that you’re not going to cause some moisture problems.
Tessa Murry (18:09.914)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:20.761)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:28.933)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (18:29.154)
I had them, maybe I didn’t have them do it. My sister had it done at her house. She’s got a, I don’t know, I think it’s like a 1940s home in St. Louis Park. And she had spray foam installed all around her rim joist and made a big difference. I mean, instantly it’s like, okay, the outside walls are not nearly as cold. It really does help. And I was out at
Tessa Murry (18:46.726)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (18:58.51)
at her house just not even a week ago. We had a little project where we’re running some wires for a hot tub and we had to drill through the rim joist. And I’ll tell you what, that wood was dry and powdery. Dry and sawdusty, like absolutely no sign in a good way. Yes. I mean, just just as wood should be. No signs of moisture whatsoever.
Tessa Murry (19:09.5)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (19:18.19)
In a good way. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (19:26.668)
That doesn’t mean it applies to every house, but it was on an area that had a lot of exposure, like it could get wet and no issues there. Of course, one scenario does not cover every house, but I love spray foam insulation at the rim joist and I’m a bigger risk taker than you.
Tessa Murry (19:29.691)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (19:35.662)
Okay, yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (19:49.658)
Well, like you said, one thing I just want to add on to it, it does really change, I think, how the house feels. You know, if you’ve got a really old leaky house and you do spray foam the rim joist, even if it’s not an old and leaky house, even like 1960s, like mid-century modern houses that, you know, do spray foam around the rim joist, I talked to homeowners and it makes a huge difference in how they feel in their home. That being said, yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (20:17.198)
Tess, hold on. Just you say 1960s. I’ll do you one better. I’d say my last house was built in 98. And I had all the fiberglass removed from the rim space because I had an unfinished basement and I had spray foam installed all around the rim. What a dramatic difference it made. Now I’m in a house that’s built in like 2002 or something. It’s got a mostly finished basement and there’s fiberglass insulation at the rim.
Tessa Murry (20:24.208)
Yeah. 1980s. Yeah. Remember. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (20:42.394)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (20:45.848)
There’s nothing I can do about it because it’s finished. And my outside walls are way colder in the winter time. I’m on the first floor. You you’re walking along the floor like you can feel it when you get to the outside. And my old house was way warmer. And they’re both relatively new houses. It really does make a big difference.
Tessa Murry (20:49.265)
huh.
Tessa Murry (20:56.164)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s.
Tessa Murry (21:07.676)
It’s the R value and it’s the air leakage and the spray foam is stopping the air leakage at that rim. So it does, like you said, it makes a big difference. So that being said, just be aware if you’re a homeowner and you’ve got, you know, an older house and it’s pretty leaky and you’re going to seal up that rim joist, you are going to change how your house breathes or doesn’t breathe. You’re going to change, you know, air quality potential, moisture that stays in the house, all those things. So it’s really important to make sure you’ve got adequate ventilation in place.
Reuben Saltzman (21:09.987)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (21:37.468)
and that you are aware of the changes that will happen once you make your house a lot more airtight.
Reuben Saltzman (21:44.824)
Yes, yes, exactly. And then part two of their question was, do they need to do anything? Do they need to put something over the spray foam? Because when you got foam insulation, you’re supposed to have some type of protection over it, because it could burn or it could give off some toxic gases or something. What about that? Yeah.
Tessa Murry (22:02.884)
like some ignition barrier or something. Yeah, I’d have to read the code again to see what it says, but I believe, yeah, if you do have like exposed foam in a habitable area, has to be have some sort of ignition barrier over it. But I don’t know. Are you familiar with what the code says on that?
Reuben Saltzman (22:19.426)
but Yeah, but there is an exception and it says you don’t need to do anything if it’s the rim space Nothing’s required They figure it’s a small enough area That even if it does burn ain’t gonna be the end of the world. It is well worth the additional Insulating value to have the minor little risk
Tessa Murry (22:27.918)
perfect. Okay. Good.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (22:43.342)
Okay, well that’s good. Good news for the homeowner. Less work, less cost. Okay. Well, good. Well, we answered our one question for the show. Are we done? Just kidding. Yeah, yeah, let’s do it. Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (22:46.008)
Yep. Yep, exactly.
Reuben Saltzman (22:52.142)
All right. All right, we’re done. That’s a show. That’s a wrap. No, I think we could probably get through a couple more, huh?
Okay. All right. The next one, the question is, hold on.
Tessa Murry (23:08.962)
We’ve got a picture with this one.
Reuben Saltzman (23:09.176)
Questions. Yeah, we got a picture. Okay, I better share my screen. Let me let me make this a little bit bigger and I will share this test. So you read the question while I show the screen. Okay. All
Tessa Murry (23:15.088)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (23:23.264)
Okay, here we go. Question says, Hi, have you ever seen an old drum trap like this? Yes, the tub trap is clogged. We have tried many ways to take off the top and it will not budge. We have not found a tool that works to do this. Do you have any thoughts on how we can get it off? And should we replace it altogether? And here’s a picture.
Reuben Saltzman (23:48.961)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (23:50.886)
For those of you that are just listening and not watching this podcast, it’s just an old drum trap. And how, what material is that Ruben?
Reuben Saltzman (23:59.471)
It looks like a lead drum trap and the cap looks like your traditional sewer access cap where you’ve got four squares sticking up and That’s it. We’ve seen a million of them like that
Tessa Murry (24:15.708)
Picture like a Lego block, like a square Lego block with the four squares on top sticking up. Looks like that. Just round.
Reuben Saltzman (24:23.148)
Yeah. Yep. Yep. That’s what we got. Okay. And so they’re saying, how do I get at this? Right? We need a tool or should we replace it all together? All right. And this was, well, and this is what I talked about earlier, how, you know, sometimes it’s, kind of unsatisfying people. I’ll give people a nice reply and then they don’t say anything, but I get to learn. Well, I didn’t know the answer to this one.
Tessa Murry (24:31.534)
Yeah, yeah, so.
Tessa Murry (24:36.725)
What was your response?
Tessa Murry (24:48.909)
Hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (24:52.536)
However, we do sewer inspections and we’ve got a couple guys in the field. All they do all day is they open sewer covers that look exactly like this and they inspect the sewer and then they put something back. So it’s like there cannot possibly be a sewer cover that they have not seen before because that’s all they do. yeah, tough job.
Tessa Murry (25:06.147)
Waaah.
Jackpot.
Tessa Murry (25:14.556)
Yeah, tough job. Tough job.
Reuben Saltzman (25:19.52)
Yep, so I asked my guys, how do we get at this? Here’s the answer. You use a hammer and a cold chisel and a cold chisel. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically just a big hunk of metal. It’s a very heavy chisel and you can you can beat the heck out of it with a hammer and it’s going to go through whatever you’re trying to go through. So you use a hammer and a cold chisel to puncture the center.
Tessa Murry (25:41.286)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (25:46.076)
stuff.
Reuben Saltzman (25:49.208)
So you make a hole in it and now you take a reciprocating saw and you cut it into pieces. I’ve seen them do it before. You cut it like in a pie-shaped pieces going from the center to the outside and that’s about it. And if you can, grab a vice grips and put a vice grips on one of those little squares to hold it so that once you’ve cut it, it’s not gonna fall in and lock your sewer.
Tessa Murry (26:00.06)
Wow.
Tessa Murry (26:14.714)
Hmm, okay. What happens if it falls in?
Reuben Saltzman (26:19.15)
I don’t know stick your hand in there and grab it
Tessa Murry (26:23.772)
Wait, our last guest used a robot to get it out, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. Crazy. Wow, well…
Reuben Saltzman (26:27.328)
I was thinking about Noah. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, it was something similar to that. But yeah, that’s it. then, but of course, once you get to the edge to cut all the way through, you’re gonna be cutting into the female threads on the drum trap a little bit. And it’s not gonna take a new screw in cover, but that’s fine. Once you’re done, you simply use a rubber plug and it’s one, it’s an expandable rubber plug.
Tessa Murry (26:39.984)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (26:47.067)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (26:57.11)
You tighten a nut or something in the middle. It makes the plug squish out and it tightly seals against all of those threads. It’s a great way to go. So super straightforward answer. Piece of cake. You got nothing to worry about here.
Tessa Murry (27:02.556)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (27:12.956)
Okay, can I ask a question? So that’s if you want to remove the cover of this thing and actually and It’s I mean this might be easy to you, but to me the sound of this no, thanks. I’ll pass I’ll hire a plumber. I Would probably just replace the whole drum trap. Can you just cut off the cut it off at the lead pipe and put in a? P trap
Reuben Saltzman (27:24.514)
Okay.
Reuben Saltzman (27:34.424)
Well, now I get to use your favorite answer.
Tessa Murry (27:37.141)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (27:39.086)
It depends. In some cases, you can. It depends on the configuration. There’s a lot of configurations where, I mean, it’s too tight. I used to live in a house where I had a drum trap and I can’t remember what the situation was, there was no room. was like, it was all this framing and all that around it and you just could not get at it.
Tessa Murry (27:40.941)
Okay, okay
Reuben Saltzman (28:07.64)
there’d be no way that you’d be able to replace it unless you really wanted to spend a lot of money on a plumber. And my thought is drum traps, while they’re no longer allowed in the code for residential use, they’re not necessarily a problem. The issue with drum traps is that where you have a traditional P trap, it’s gonna be a self scouring trap. It means that
Tessa Murry (28:15.845)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (28:23.376)
Mm.
Reuben Saltzman (28:34.762)
Stuff goes through there and it goes water and Solids go through there very quickly the action of the water going through there quickly is going to wash out any sediment any hairs any Fingernail clippings that go down whatever it all gets rinsed out really quickly, but with a drum trap. It’s this it’s this big drum I mean think of like a coffee can where water goes it might there’s all different configurations water might go in at the top and then
Tessa Murry (29:01.724)
Mm.
Reuben Saltzman (29:03.116)
leave at the bottom and might go in at the bottom and leave at the top. They come in all different shapes and sizes, but water goes in one side, it comes out the other and you don’t get any self scouring action. Any solids that go into a drum trap, go to the bottom and they stay there forever. So they can turn into miniature cesspools. They can get really nasty. And the important part with having a house where you’ve got a drum trap is to make sure that it stays clean. I mean,
Tessa Murry (29:06.895)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (29:16.215)
Tessa Murry (29:19.75)
house.
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (29:32.412)
Wow.
Reuben Saltzman (29:33.63)
I moved into a house in Minneapolis in 2004 and we had a drum trap at the bathtub and I moved in in like January and I think by March the trap was clogged. It was probably mostly clogged by the time I moved in. No water is going down the tub. I end up taking the cover off. I take the cover off and there’s water backed up and it comes out. It’s leaking out of there.
Tessa Murry (29:46.328)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:52.134)
Ugh.
Ugh.
Tessa Murry (30:00.348)
Ew. Gross. Yeah. Ugh. Ugh.
Reuben Saltzman (30:02.508)
Gross. Yeah, super nasty. It smelled the high heaven, but I, you know, I got some of the kitchen gloves, you know, dishwashing gloves and I stuck my hand in there and got all this, you know, hair, whatever. Gross. You know, it’s stuff that sewer cleaning companies see on a daily basis. Pulled all this gunk out of there and flushed a bunch of water through it and then replaced the cover. And then I
Tessa Murry (30:13.188)
Mm-hmm.
Eww. Eww. Eww. Eww.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (30:30.274)
picked up a $5 hair net, you these little things that you put over your bathtub drain, hair catcher. Yeah, yeah. You can buy them at any home improvement store. I put one of those over the drain and I lived there until 2011 without incident for the next seven years. It worked flawlessly. No issues ever again.
Tessa Murry (30:33.753)
huh. Hair catcher. Yeah, like hair catcher thing. No.
Tessa Murry (30:52.267)
Okay. Yeah. Well, that’s your story. That’s your happy story, Ruben. And I mean, that’s your truth. That is your truth. Yes. If you’re a homeowner who can, you know, use one of those little catcher things and make sure your kids don’t pull it off and throw other things down the drain, or you don’t want to have to deal with cleaning it out on a regular basis, you know, there’s, there’s options, I guess, for you.
Reuben Saltzman (30:59.81)
That’s my truth.
Reuben Saltzman (31:19.074)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know, if I had hired a plumber, I’m sure they would have charged a couple thousand bucks. It would have been expensive. Yeah, I do. I do. That stuff’s expensive. So
Tessa Murry (31:21.072)
There’s options.
Tessa Murry (31:29.146)
You think so? Yeah. Man. Ugh. And it’s only more expensive now, too. I mean, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (31:38.028)
Surely, surely it is. Okay.
Tessa Murry (31:41.164)
Okay, well, interesting. Alright, hopefully we answered that question.
Reuben Saltzman (31:45.006)
Alright.
Reuben Saltzman (31:48.522)
All right, next one. This is on recessed lights. I’m gonna ask this one, cause I think you’re gonna wanna answer this, okay? Sound good? Okay. All right, this one says, I watched your videos online, including the ones on recessed lights. I wanna get them for my bedroom, but I have some big concerns about installing them because of possible drafts and heat loss.
Tessa Murry (31:54.276)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (31:57.978)
Yeah, go ahead. Yep.
Reuben Saltzman (32:16.53)
and energy penalties and ice dams. You basically you’re putting a hole in your ceiling and now you’re adding a heat source to that hole and there’s going to be air leaking up around it. That’s what a recessed light is. And he said in your video, you mentioned that wafer down lights are great and let’s define a wafer down light. It looks just like a recessed light. If you’re in a room, you got wafer down lights, you look up,
Tessa Murry (32:30.844)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (32:36.038)
Hm.
Reuben Saltzman (32:43.734)
You don’t know if you’re looking at a wafer down light or a recess light. Sometimes they look almost identical, but with the wafer down light, it’s basically an LED light fixture that’s about the thickness of drywall. You cut a hole in your drywall, use a hole saw, you cut a five inch, six inch hole. And then this fixture just kind of snaps into place with these little tabs and it’s about the thickness of your drywall. So you don’t have this big penetration going into the attic.
Tessa Murry (32:50.927)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (32:58.693)
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (33:13.112)
and it’s much cooler. So that’s your way for downlight. Okay, so I mentioned, said, he wrote in the video, you mentioned that way for downlights are great, but you did not specifically mention if they would be great for a ceiling that goes into an attic or in this case, a bedroom. Tessa?
Tessa Murry (33:28.476)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben Saltzman (33:33.581)
What do we do?
Tessa Murry (33:35.676)
My first question. Well, I’ve got questions. I don’t have an answer. My questions would be okay. What What is the attic space like above this bedroom? Are we talking is this a big? Voluminous attic that has lots of space in it. Does it have does the attic have good ventilation good soft intake good roof exhaust does it have? airflow through it if you’re
Reuben Saltzman (33:36.184)
What do you think?
Tessa Murry (34:03.184)
going to make holes in that ceiling and allow warm, humid air to leak up through those penetrations. In a bigger attic, well then it’s probably less risky for dealing with issues, but if you’ve got a tiny attic and there’s not a lot of space up there, you physically can’t crawl up there, then it gets a little bit more risky with potentially getting more
condensation buildup on the underside of the roof deck if you don’t have good ventilation and if you can’t get up there to do any air sealing from the attic side well then you just made holes and you can’t seal them up in an easy way. So you know I’d say if you’ve got a big attic you could crawl into it and you can push the insulation back and you can seal around those can lights that you’re gonna install and then put more insulation back over top of it. Go for it!
If you can get adequate insulation around the can light, if it’s not right out near the exterior wall top plate where usually you get where the rafters pinch down and it gets really small, it’s difficult to get good insulation over that spot. So can lights in those areas are difficult. But if you put some can lights in the center of the attic and it’s a big space above it, good ventilation, you can get up there and air seal. Okay, sure, fine.
if you don’t have that situation and it’s a tight attic space, there’s no access or there’s not great ventilation or anything like that going on. Then I would stick with the not punching holes in your ceiling.
Reuben Saltzman (35:40.748)
Yeah, yeah, agreed, agreed. And my thought would be if you’ve got, well, you know what? I don’t care if you have an attic above or not. I don’t see any reason for recess lights to exist anymore. I will probably never install another recess light in my life.
Tessa Murry (35:43.483)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (35:57.849)
Yeah, you know
And that’s a great point, because actually these wafer lights, look just like recessed can lights. But yeah, from below, you would never know. So yeah, why would you punch holes in your ceiling if you can just use these? Here’s a question. But it’s, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (36:08.632)
From below, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (36:16.62)
Yeah. Yeah. Although, I mean, you do have to punch a hole. You need to cut a hole in the drywall because it does sit flush with the drywall, but it’s the thickness of drywall and they have a little gasket around the lip that goes up against the ceiling. So, I mean, it’s not like it’s going to be as good of a seal as no hole, but it’s pretty good. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (36:29.265)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (36:37.398)
Yeah, it’s better than a typical can light or an older can light. Yeah. Yeah. I think the gasket’s pretty airtight. put, actually put one in my old condo in a bathroom and it was, was a nice option, I think, although I had a huge attic and we had ice dam problems anyway. So was like, what’s one more hole?
Reuben Saltzman (36:46.992)
okay.
Reuben Saltzman (36:56.044)
Yeah, yeah. And you know what’s cool about those two is a lot of them now, they’ve got this little slider on there and you can adjust the color of
Tessa Murry (37:06.81)
Yes. Yes. And actually, you know what, just talking about that, I just installed a new light in the kitchen recently, I took down a horrendous halogen, like light in a big metal housing, long rectangular light, was like a fluorescent, it was a fluorescent bulbs, you know, the long tubes with the mercury, and took that thing down and Home Depot had
Reuben Saltzman (37:27.66)
Hmm. Yeah, sure do. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:35.228)
just an led, light that came with a remote and I installed that it’s hardwired but install that and It’s the best thing ever. It has been life changing being able to flip on the switch and then adjust it from Warm to cool to bright to dim There’s a nightlight setting
Reuben Saltzman (37:56.088)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (37:58.328)
It is so nice. And now I’m like a light snob. I’m like, this light doesn’t have, you can’t dim it, you can’t change the tone of it.
Reuben Saltzman (38:03.277)
Ha
Reuben Saltzman (38:08.05)
Did we lose a war? What the heck?
Tessa Murry (38:10.396)
For go back though is what I’m saying. You know, and a lot of these new lights you get with these LED and you know, these features on them. It’s nice to be able to change the color of the light, I think. So, yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (38:23.34)
Yeah, yeah, it is. So basically, you know, my answer was about the same that you gave him. And I said, he said, are they good for a bedroom ceiling with an attic above? I said, well, not as good as nothing at all, but it’s a lot better than a traditional can light. He said, do they reduce heat loss compared to other units? Yes, they definitely do. LEDs run a lot cooler and you don’t have
Tessa Murry (38:38.779)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (38:43.759)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (38:48.653)
Yes.
Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (38:52.19)
six inches of can protruding into your attic space, getting closer to your roof decking potentially. He also said, do they eliminate the chance of ice dams? Heck no. There’s no way it’s going to eliminate the chance of ice dams. The end. then, and then he also, he also asked, can you do spray foam around it? And you can, you cannot do spray foam. You cannot foam these into place.
Tessa Murry (38:54.48)
Yeah
Tessa Murry (38:58.928)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (39:04.508)
shh
Tessa Murry (39:09.657)
Nice try.
Reuben Saltzman (39:22.25)
If you, you should never have spray foam touching any of your recess light fixtures. If you want to have spray foam in an attic and you’ve got recess fixtures, you gotta have like this, this, what’s the thing called that you put over the recess light test? What a baffle? What is it?
Tessa Murry (39:23.322)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (39:40.06)
Well, I know you can build like an insulation box with like thermax or yep and build a box and put it over top of that and then seal that box to the attic floor with foam. You just don’t want anything touching. You don’t want foam touching the can light or the recess light.
Reuben Saltzman (39:44.598)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (39:56.888)
That’s right. Yeah. But there’s a product. It’s like you can buy these things that are made to go over them and they’re kind of preformed. And I can’t think of the name of it. Too bad.
Tessa Murry (40:09.296)
Hmm. interesting. Okay. Yeah, I’m not sure.
Reuben Saltzman (40:13.45)
All right, next question. You want to know I’ll I’ll read this one. Should we do we have time? Hold on. I didn’t look. We don’t have time, do we? You got to go.
Tessa Murry (40:18.896)
Are we doing one more? Is this going to be our last one?
Tessa Murry (40:25.404)
I do need to go actually. I have a commitment.
Reuben Saltzman (40:28.334)
Right? We’ll tease it. We’re teasing it. We’re gonna have a great question on our next podcast. I can’t wait.
Tessa Murry (40:36.364)
I do think this is going to be a four part series. Do you think we’ve got one more show left with these questions at the rate we’re going? I think we only have three left. Three. Yeah.
Reuben Saltzman (40:42.722)
Let me see. Let me see. You know what? We’ve got three more questions. Listeners, y’all better send us some more questions or our next show is going to be very short. You know what we can do? We can chit chat for 30 minutes and we’ll cover three questions.
Tessa Murry (41:01.212)
Well, it’s not hard for us is it?
Reuben Saltzman (41:04.718)
It’s not that hard or maybe we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled podcast where we talk about specific topics and we had guests on the show We can do whatever we want
Tessa Murry (41:10.198)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (41:17.052)
We’d love to hear feedback from you listeners or viewers on what you’d like us to talk about or any more questions that you have like Ruben said so shoot us an email at
Reuben Saltzman (41:18.35)
All right.
Reuben Saltzman (41:27.918)
podcast at StructureTech.com. We read them all. All right. Thanks for tuning in everybody. We appreciate you. Catch you next time. Take care.
Tessa Murry (41:39.13)
Bye.