In this episode of Fix-It Radio, host John dives into the art of home maintenance and preparation for the colder months. From dealing with snow-covered yards to tactical leaf and gutter cleanups, John provides listeners with invaluable handyman tips to make indoor tasks a breeze. Special guest Steve Horvath from Geno’s Auto Service joins the conversation, sharing insights on maintaining outdoor spaces, even when nature decides otherwise. Tune in for a dose of practical advice that will keep your household in top shape all winter long.
SPEAKER 07 :
Walter? Upstairs! Are you alright?
SPEAKER 13 :
In the floor behind the chair.
SPEAKER 03 :
This is America.
SPEAKER 02 :
Does everybody know what time it is? Fix It Radio.
SPEAKER 15 :
And it is Fix-It Radio, KLZ 560. Thanks for joining us today. We appreciate it very much. Live program, November the 16th. So if you’re listening to a replay show, you know what day it is. Beautiful day here in Colorado. Steve Horvath from Geno’s Auto Service with me today. Good morning, Steve.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good morning.
SPEAKER 15 :
There’s still a little white stuff on the golf course out here behind us. It makes it a little hard to find the ball.
SPEAKER 03 :
I was doing stuff at the shop this week, maintenance, things like that. I put in some windows over garage doors, so…
SPEAKER 15 :
We’re going to talk about some of that today, because for some of you, it’s a little hard to do some things outside, although it’s going to be a pretty decent day today and tomorrow. But some of you might still have snow in the yard, depending upon how much sun you get, what side of the house you’re looking at or working on or whatever. It’s hard to do much of anything else. I was even looking last weekend or during the week, even, you know, concrete repair, cracking and so on. A little hard to do right now because our nighttime temperatures get down enough that typically it’s when you’re going to do some of those outside repairs you need the concrete to not fall below about 50 degrees for about 48 hours typically is what they will tell you so a little hard to do some of those things right now that stuff’s probably not going to happen now until we get back into the springtime months march april-ish so if you’ve sort of put some of that off there might be some caulking and things like that on the driveway you could do but actually fixing of cracks and things like that with some of those types of products that’s a a little bit dicier and harder to do right now so for a lot of you you’re going to be doing you inside stuff you know all on the same token as we look out even to the west here about half the trees have the leaves off and about half are still on so some of you may be doing some leaf cleanup gutter cleanup things along those lines of snow last week probably spurred that along a little bit maybe But for a lot of you, you might be out doing some cleanup and things like that. But we’ve got some quote-unquote handyman tips, helpful handyman tips I’ll go through today. I don’t know if we can get to all of them or not, but we’ll do our best to get through some. And if you guys, by the way, have any, let us know.
SPEAKER 03 :
People are putting up Christmas lights.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s going to be a big one this weekend probably. That’s me tomorrow probably. Yeah, I’ll do a few things tomorrow along those lines, depending if it’s nice enough. I’m getting the point, Steve. I won’t work if it’s super cold outside.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and there’s a little bit of snow on the roof and the hazards of falling are.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, don’t do that. If you’ve got snow on there, unless you can do it from a ladder and you can go around the outside of the house and you’re not having to get up on the shingles and stuff. Yes, if you’re up on the roof and there’s any kind of snow, be extremely, extremely careful. We don’t want anybody getting hurt, of course. And for some of you. So many different ways now to do Christmas lights. Probably could do a whole show on that. Wasn’t planning on doing that today. Probably will do that early September. On the same token, a lot of you guys will start doing this through the Thanksgiving. A lot of people will start now and even have them ready to go for Thanksgiving. Some people do it right after Thanksgiving. I will say this as a side note. The LED, or the invention of, I should say, especially in Christmas lights, has made that so much easier than it used to be. So if you’re still using the old incandescent type lights, and some of you may still have some of those kicking around, here’s what you can do. In a lot of cases, you can change just the bulbs where you don’t have to buy a whole new string, depending upon how you’ve done your lights in the past. If they’re the mini lights, just throw them away and get another string and call it good. But those of you that have the bigger, like type C bulbs, that you use for Christmas lights, you can just buy, and the best way to do that is go to Amazon or someplace like that and just buy however many bulbs in whatever color you think you need and how you wanna do your house, and just replace the incandescent bulbs with LEDs, and your cost savings on the electric side of it is huge your bar near pay for those in at least one if not two years and then on top of that just not having to worry about how many of my plug together you can literally and yes there’s a limit you can do the math on the limit but If you look at what an LED draws versus what an incandescent bulb draws, no longer do you have to worry about, well, can I put two strings together or three? Do I need to make sure the fuse at the one end is still good? All those different things. With LEDs, you darn near just don’t even worry about it because you can run about as many strings together as probably your house can handle. And even some of you that have huge houses, you can darn near run as many strings together as you want out of one outlet. with an LED and not have any issues because the draw is just so much less than it used to be. So something to consider. Now you can also, as a side note, cheat. And with the advent now of the sort of spotlights where they can shine up on the house and make it look colorful and so on and so forth, the reality is you don’t have to string the lights like you once did. So if you’re just wanting some color and you still want it to look good, they’ve got abilities now to make things sort of dance around on the house and look really good without having to string any lights. Sure.
SPEAKER 03 :
One of my neighbors, both my neighbors on each side of me have put up, the lights are more permanent in the gutter. Oh, those are great.
SPEAKER 15 :
Jellyfish lighting?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I think that’s what, yeah, so you don’t even notice they’re there, and they turn them off. You don’t even know when they’re there.
SPEAKER 15 :
You can run them all different times of the year, too, just depending upon what you’re trying to do. Those, yeah, those are really cool. If you’ve got the ability to do that, that’s really slick. Now, I would also say, and this is something that, That again, we’ve talked about some of this on past shows, but when it comes to a lot of the Christmas light stuff in general, put them on a smart plug. And if you don’t have a smart plug already installed, you can put just a smart plug adapter where you plug it in. As long as that thing has got power all of the time, you can then program that. a gazillion different brands literally you can buy just pretty much any brand you want including amazon basic has a brand that you can put in uh… summer indoor summer outdoor just make sure you use an outdoor one reality is you can make those christmas lights come on and off automatically on a calendar you on a schedule where you’re not having to worry about turning him on at night turning them off all that sort of stuff just put him on a schedule And they work so much better than some of the cheesy timers that, you know, as soon as the sun goes down, they run for four hours or six hours or whatever. Just put a smart plug in and be done with it. So much easier to do that.
SPEAKER 03 :
You’re right. I haven’t done that yet. They work so well.
SPEAKER 15 :
They really do. So for a lot of you listening that are trying to do Christmas lights and things along those lines, absolutely. They work extremely well and do that. And most of all, when it comes to electrical stuff in general, if you don’t know, ask somebody that does. Last thing you want is some sort of a problem on your roof and fire and getting shocked and on and on we go. Typically, and I’m not an extension cord fan. I’m one of those where if you can do what you’re doing, even by having an outlet added somewhere and avoid using an extension cord, by all means, try to do that and try to get rid of the cords altogether because the cords… can typically be one of your first places you have problems, hazards, and so on. And if you’re going to do that, make sure, of course, if you’re going to do an extension cord, you’re using an outdoor extension cord, grounded, all of those safety things. Again, most of you guys as listeners, you’re all very sharp. I don’t have to go through those things. You know exactly what to do. But if you’re doing Christmas lights, just be safe. Know what you’re doing. If you have any questions, ask. Any electrician typically could help you with some of those things. And if you want to add, I talked about this yesterday with one of our weekday sponsors, that if you’re really fortunate and or you’ve got a good electrician, add an eave outlet. So what I mean by that is in the soffit of the roof, Add an outlet, and you only need one in the front, one in the back sort of a thing, and you can literally run all of your Christmas lights the way that I’m talking out of that and not run any extension cords. You literally plug into that socket in the eave and start running your lights. And if you’re building a house, by the way, or you’re doing a remodel on a house, add those. They’re pretty inexpensive at the time of construction to add. I’m fortunate. Whoever did their last remodel, actually, I know the guy that did mine. So if you’re listening, thanks for doing that. They added, in my case, about four of those around the eaves of the house in different locations. And I tell you what, Steve, handiest thing ever. especially when you’re running any kind of lighting or things along those lines. But, you know, it just makes things so much nicer. And if you’ve got the ability to do that, yeah, if you’re doing a remodel or you even want to add one, as long as you’ve got some attic space where they can, you know, reach out into the eaves, and you’d be surprised what an electrician can do as far as snaking wires out there. You know, as long as he’s got the ability to access that area, even pretty short, they’ve got tools whereby they can, they can get those wires fished out there and add you some outlets so that’s something to think about for some of you where that would make putting christmas lights up much much easier so just a little tidbit most of all just be safe as steve was saying if you’re on a ladder and those sorts of things be really safe depending upon how tall your roof is and all of that just be really safe and and you know don’t take any risks there’s always a story we have all heard of that person that was doing something along these lines and something happened and they fall off and they’ve broke this or they broke that. And in some cases, life is never the same after. So, yeah, we don’t want that. We want you guys to be extremely safe. If you’re going to do any of that, you know, have another person around to help you out and just be really, really careful if that’s something that you’re going to do. Jim, are you there? Jim, go ahead.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I’m here. Hey, John. Well, first on the Christmas lights, I mean, I don’t personally do Christmas lights, but on the Christmas lights, I would think they would have – Because you see, and everything now, why wouldn’t they have solar power where you just plug something down into the ground next to your tree or whatever and then put your Christmas lights up attached to your solar, your little solar panel?
SPEAKER 15 :
I don’t think they’ve got enough storage capacity yet to do that. And if they do, the cost to do that becomes prohibitive. I mean, you almost have to have one of those, you know, little little packs just because the amount of draw, you know, you can get the battery charged up with the solar end of it. But now to let that run, you know, keep in mind, it gets dark at 435 o’clock at night in the dead of winter. as we get through Christmas time here, and that’ll run sometimes 10, 10.30 at night, so they just don’t have enough juice capacity to do that.
SPEAKER 03 :
They probably wouldn’t make the lights bright enough.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, well, they dim as night goes on.
SPEAKER 05 :
I don’t know, John. I just saw a thing on TikTok. They’ve got this new thing for people that have sheds like me, and it’s an LED light that goes on the inside, and And it connects to a solar panel that you hook up to the outside of your shed where the sun can hit it so you can have light. And that thing’s bright.
SPEAKER 15 :
How long will it run?
SPEAKER 05 :
You know what? I don’t remember what the guy said.
SPEAKER 15 :
And that would be the issue. I mean, again, I don’t know if there’s any of these things made for Christmas lights or not, but that would be the only issue is does it have enough capacity to run that next day? Again, it needs to run from, I don’t know, about five hours roughly. Will it run five hours straight?
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, right.
SPEAKER 15 :
And the sun isn’t up that far. Yeah, and that’s the other issue we have this time of the year is we don’t get a lot of recharge depending upon the day.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention to you is – This is a real big pet peeve of mine with all home builders, even, I don’t care, modular homes, all homes. I’ve only had one home that had, I think, one on the front of the house and one on the back. What I don’t understand, if I ever had a new house built, I swear, they’d be put… I don’t know why they don’t put electrical outlets on all sides of houses.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, and that goes back to what I was saying a moment ago. Usually it’s cost, Jim, and somebody not requesting it. Yeah, I’m with you. I mean, yeah, I currently have a house because when the last owner did the remodel, he did exactly what you’re talking about, and I have several outlets around the outside of the house and in the eave, and it makes things really accessible when you’re trying to plug something in.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, you know, the thing is, John, I always hear this thing about cost, You know, and I don’t, you know, probably initially the cost might be up there, but, you know, I don’t really buy into the cost thing because everybody says, well, it’s the cost. You know, I remember when they used to have brake drums all the way around on cars. Well, guess what? Now we have this brake. They used to have, you know, fuel injection. Oh, you can’t have it. It’s too costly. Now you have fuel injection on every car.
SPEAKER 15 :
On the same token, Jim, it’s also why you’re paying $55,000 on average for a car today, which is the average new car price. Yeah, what you’re saying is correct, but if they keep passing those things on eventually, and it’s that way right now with new cars, the average person has a hard time buying one.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I’m going to kind of disagree with you on that, John. The reason why I’m going to tell you why I disagree with you, I don’t think it’s that at all. It’s called the NTSB. National Transportation Safety Board. They keep pushing all this safety stuff off onto these cars because people just ain’t got enough brains in their head to know how to drive properly. So they got to build these cars for people that don’t know how to drive and get into accidents so they don’t get killed.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, I mean, other than, and I’m not disagreeing, Jim, but the only mandates really right now on, I mean, other than some of the crash things that are out there, but as far as the bells and whistles on a car, the only thing mandated are backup cameras. Everything else is an option that people are buying.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, what about seatbelts?
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, seatbelts have been around since the 60s. And airbags, I mean, airbags have been around for quite some time. They’ve become more sophisticated. And, you know, I’ve said even on the Daily Show, I’m one that, you know, let the free market do that. And if you want to buy a car with no safety items on it at all, so be it, the cost is less. I will tell you, though, Jim, I don’t think very many people would buy those. Most people are going to buy the car that’s the most safe.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I mean, you’re probably right on that. I mean, I ended up buying a Ford Ranger. And I didn’t get what the guy was telling me when I bought it. He says, well, I’m just going to let you know that the windows are broken in the pickup. I didn’t know what he was referring to. After I bought the pickup, I went to roll down the window. I’m like, what? There’s no automatic windows. You have to freaking crank the thing down. And this truck is not that old.
SPEAKER 15 :
You can’t hardly buy a car now with crank windows. Even a truck. Most trucks even have automatic windows now. Or, you know, power windows.
SPEAKER 05 :
I know. That’s why I was. I know. That’s why I was. And, I mean, this Ford Ranger is so basic, John. It would blow you away how basic this truck is.
SPEAKER 15 :
And my feeling is they should still build some of those, and if people want to buy them. But the reality is, Jim, most don’t. Most will buy at least air conditioning. Well, I don’t think there’s a car made today in the U.S. that doesn’t come with air conditioning. So air conditioning, power windows, power steering, power brakes, all that, that’s pretty standard.
SPEAKER 03 :
Don’t you think when they’re coming down the line, it’s much easier to get the same stuff?
SPEAKER 15 :
It’s all standardized, yes.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. But I just want to weigh in on the outlet thing.
SPEAKER 15 :
The outlets are the best thing ever, Jim.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate you. You bet. Bye.
SPEAKER 15 :
All right, man, I’ll let you go. Jeff in Western Montana, hang tight. We’ll come back, give you plenty of time. Fix It Radio, guys, don’t go anywhere. The website, fixitradio.com. KLZ 560.
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SPEAKER 15 :
Fix-It Radio, the website fixitradio.com. Myself, Steve Horvath from Geno’s Auto Service. He’ll be with me through Drive Radio as well. So those of you guys that have car questions, by all means, hang tight. We’ll get to those here shortly. But Jeff in Montana, go ahead.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hey, greetings to you from slightly overcast western Montana.
SPEAKER 15 :
Very sunny here today, so thank you for sending it our way.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, our snow has only come down to about the 5,000-foot level. We’re at about 3,200 feet where we sit. So I can see it on the mission range, but it hasn’t hit us, although this weekend I think it’s supposed to. Gotcha. Regarding the lights, there’s three aspects of that that you have to consider. And the first one is the draw of a bulb, and you addressed all that. Yes. The little one-spikes lights, as you can put out there, if you ever took one of those apart, you have one LED and one basically AA battery. And that solar cell on there will keep that one battery kind of charged, but it doesn’t last all night. No. At least, they don’t.
SPEAKER 15 :
No, they don’t.
SPEAKER 06 :
No. So you have to do the math of how many LEDs do you have out there, 20, 50, 100 in a string? And how many batteries are you going to need?
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, I would think that by the time you do that, you’re now talking about buying one of those mini pack uh your storage you know electrical storage devices you battery packs whatever you want to call it jeff that can be charged either through 110 you know through 120 or you can charge them up solar but those things aren’t cheap i mean even the small ones of those are 300 and 350 bucks or so
SPEAKER 06 :
Right, yeah, because, I mean, just look at the price of battery packs for a drill, and you can see how expensive.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, go buy one for your Makita or your Milwaukee or whatever, and you’re, you know, $80 or so minimum.
SPEAKER 03 :
You can buy a lot of extension, of course, for $300.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, and so, and the second part of that is, okay, in order to charge something like that with sort of a size of a…
SPEAKER 15 :
solar array would you need and that’s that’s going to be pretty substantial yeah i’m again i’m not i’m i don’t know that world that well and i’m never really studied it but i would think just looking at how some of those battery packs i just mentioned are charged they’re probably a four foot square or six foot square solar panel that do that oh at a minimum yeah minimum
SPEAKER 06 :
And then the third part is what happens on days like today when the solar isolation is really low?
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, that would be a problem. And if you wanted Christmas lights every day here in Colorado, especially even like last week where we had such cloudy weather for two or three days, that would have been a struggle.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, so for the same reasons we can’t rely on solar to power our grid, we can’t rely on it to power our Christmas lights. It’s just not that consistent.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, and here’s the thing. Can anything be done? Sure, Jeff. It’s a matter of cost. The reality is guys can still go out and buy, you know, spend $100, $150 on whatever Christmas lights they want, plug them into the outlet, and they go.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, now the Chinese and some companies in the U.S. are looking at nuclear batteries, which is an interesting thing. They’re not very powerful, but they generate a consistent amount of current for over a period of like 50 or 100 years. Interesting. Yeah, so that might be something you might want to look at in a future show.
SPEAKER 15 :
I will. You just told me something I didn’t know. I wasn’t aware of that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Especially for computers because they need the constant power. Yeah, that’d be awesome. Or the steady power. Right.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, they’re actually looking at it for things like pacemakers and other implants.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, absolutely. That’s really cool.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. And for those who are afraid of radiation, the radiation they’re using is the kind that can be stopped by a piece of paper. There’s three different kinds of radiation, so it’s not something that’s going to irradiate your body and cause cancer.
SPEAKER 15 :
Probably getting as much out of the microwave. Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, well, actually, microwave doesn’t give you any. Bananas. Banana is kind of a joking metric that they use. You know, how many equivalents of eating one banana is, say, an x-ray? And I think it’s something like 50. If you eat 50 bananas to get the equivalent of an x-ray, maybe it’s six for a dental x-ray. I mean, it’s, you know. So you can use the banana metric for that. Really?
SPEAKER 03 :
Bananas are slightly radioactive. Really? Yeah. Did not know this. That’s fascinating.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yep. And then on safety, when I lived in Colorado Springs, I had a neighbor who was in the early 60s at the time, and he fell from just the second rung of his ladder. And he says he didn’t think he hit his head. But he had two brain aneurysms just from the jarring of his brain as he fell. And he was, yeah, it was touch and go there for a while. And he never was completely, he never fully recovered. Let me put it that way. Wow. And, you know, there’s just something about aging that makes us more fragile.
SPEAKER 15 :
You are correct. So my point earlier, be very, very careful. And if there’s something that you’re trying to do that you’re just not 100% familiar with, Jeff, at the end of the day, hire it out.
SPEAKER 06 :
Bingo. Now, having said that, just to prove that I am foolishly inconsistent, I will break out my ladder within the next week or two to put up some lights. But I will always have at least three limbs on the ladder at any given time.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yep.
SPEAKER 06 :
And I won’t reach over to a place where I can either fall or have the ladder tip.
SPEAKER 15 :
Me neither. I don’t like heights in the first place, so I’m extremely cautious with that.
SPEAKER 06 :
Bingo. So I’m not saying don’t ever get on a ladder, but, you know. Just be careful. As Dirty Harry said, a man’s got to know his limitations.
SPEAKER 15 :
Good one, Jeff. Good one.
SPEAKER 06 :
So thanks, guys.
SPEAKER 15 :
Nope, that’s good advice. Appreciate you, Jeff. Joe, you’re next. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
John, if you’re going to get one of those spotlight – you know, Christmas lights where it broadcasts onto your house. And you’re going to run an extension cord out, which you pretty much have to do. You need to tape up, either tape that connection up, because if you get snow or rain at that junction where the light plugs into the cord, it’s going to trip the breaker. If you’ve got a GFI, it’s going to trip the GFI. I think they also sell for about $6 a little waterproof connector box that you can clamp over. But if you don’t protect If you don’t protect that junction, I guarantee you it’s going to trip or short.
SPEAKER 15 :
Really quick, Joe, for those of you that may be running even multiple strings of lights where you plug one string into the next string, make sure you’re taping that one up as well.
SPEAKER 04 :
Right. And with regard to those spotlight light shows, there’s a couple different ones. The one I like is what I have. I have somewhere, if you want to change the color or the display, you have to go out and push a button. For an extra five bucks, you get one that has a little remote. You can stand at your front door and change the colors, change the direction of rotation, change it from rotating to blinking. There are some differences.
SPEAKER 15 :
That’s one of those things I don’t have a lot of familiarity with, so thank you for that, Joe, because I don’t know much about those.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, we didn’t bother with the smart plug. Just before we go to bed at night, we just pick up the remote control and point it at the light and just, you know, turn it off manually when we go to bed.
SPEAKER 15 :
Sure.
SPEAKER 04 :
But if you leave it on all night, it’s LEDs. If you left it on all night.
SPEAKER 15 :
Not a huge deal.
SPEAKER 04 :
You’re not talking, not a huge deal.
SPEAKER 15 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
But I would recommend get one that has the wireless remote. And there’s almost no, I think, you know, like $39 for one and $45. $45.99 for the other. So get the one with the remote and tape up your junction or get that little. I think those little plastic junction covers are about $5, John. As I recall, they’re not that much.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, and again, that’s one of those I know I’ve seen them, never used them. I still use a roll of black tape. I don’t know. I guess just because it’s easy for me to do, Joe, and just black tape is easy. But to your point, I mean, if you’re just wanting to do that a little bit nicer and you don’t want to mess with the tape or whatever, yeah, put one of those covers on it.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I just use the tape myself. I put it on once now and I take it off after Christmas. So it’s not a big deal to tape it up once.
SPEAKER 15 :
Well, and no offense, Joe, as cheap as extension cords have gotten, you could darn near make that thing permanent, tape it up, and just roll it all up, throw it in a tub, and bring it out next Christmas.
SPEAKER 04 :
You could. Hey, John, I got one more suggestion for people who want to take their mower deck off. Yeah. You got time for one more? Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, you’re fine.
SPEAKER 04 :
Go ahead. You know, in my case, I have to take my mower deck off every year to put on my front-mount snowblower. But a lot of people like to take them off to clean out the underside and maybe sharpen the blades, replace the blades. And if you jack them up, it makes it a lot easier. But the trouble with jacking them up, like with a floor jack, it’s not stable. You know, if you jack it up from the center, it’ll want to tip left and right. So I got a couple of 2x6s, and I just cut them up and made a couple of blocks. So, yeah, I jack it up. So I stacked a couple two-by-sixes and then cut a couple little stops on top so I can’t roll forward or back. So I jack it up, slide these little homemade jack stands, if you will, out of two-by-six under the rear wheels. And it just makes it safe and so easy to undo the deck and drop it down and slide it out. Good idea. Because I found the clearances are just, you know, they’ve got stuff hanging down and it won’t slide. You’ve got to look. reach under, lift up this little hanger, and it’s just a pain in the butt. And just making a couple little jack stands out of 2×6. Yeah, you still need a jack to jack it up, but then you can put the little wheel blocks under and then do what you need to do. I don’t know how many people take their mower decks off, but if you haven’t taken them off in the last couple of years, you probably should.
SPEAKER 15 :
Absolutely. Yeah, no, it’s a great idea. And yeah, that’s a writing mower thing that each person listening, and it depends on the model that you have and how it works and so on. Some are much easier than others. And by the way, Joe, that does kind of come down to when you buy that brand originally, look at some of those things because some of them are much easier than others to take apart.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, and I’ve got a John Deere, which theoretically is kind of a high-end. By the way, John Deere, there’s a John Deere you can buy at Home Depot, and then there’s a John Deere you buy from the distributor, and there’s a world of difference between the two.
SPEAKER 15 :
Two different machines, yep.
SPEAKER 04 :
Completely two different machines. So I’ve got a high-end John Deere, and in theory it’s pretty, yeah, I’ve taken it off without jacking it up, but I just find that,
SPEAKER 15 :
jacking it up you know probably cuts the time and they have to slide it out absolutely that’s great idea fabulous yeah so much so much more clearance all right hey john i’m going to call you back and drive right okay question about bg epr sounds great we’ve got the bg guy joining us during the show as well so we you can get that right from the horse’s mouth
SPEAKER 04 :
Fantastic. Thank you. All right, Joe.
SPEAKER 15 :
Appreciate you very much. Yeah, for those of you listening, we will have Les from BG on with us a little bit later in Drive Radio. So if you guys want to call in specifically with some BG additive type questions and so on, we’ll have Les on that will kind of straighten us out on things. And we appreciate BG very much when it comes to Drive Radio and the things they do. I mean, I’ve been using – that’s a side note, but I’ve been using their products for – eons since I was a kid you know late 60s early 70s I have to go back and look and see when they actually started distributing here in the Denver area but pretty much from day one I can remember as a kid you know being around that product and great products by the way including this this is a fix-it radio thing including they have a lot of products that will work for around the house you know cleaning you know products you know break clean type products lubricants things along those lines so great products everywhere and I cannot talk highly enough about their particular products all right I got a few more handy tips we’ll talk about if you have any questions by the way on I guess because we started talking about Christmas lighting if you guys have any more questions along those lines please ask three oh three four seven seven five six zero zero or if you have a suggestion on anything along those lines They have come a long way from what they used to be. So some of you that have been hanging Christmas lights for years and still have the old stuff, let me tell you what, the new stuff is way advanced, like a lot of other things are, way advanced from what it used to be. So we’ll be right back. This is Fix It Radio, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 12 :
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SPEAKER 15 :
All right, we are back. Fix It Radio, KLZ 560. And again, we kind of talked about Christmas lights, which is fine. A lot of you guys will work on some of those this weekend and or next as we start heading into Thanksgiving weekend. And people will even be doing it on Thanksgiving, depending upon what the actual weather is like and so on. So Christmas is fast approaching. And I personally like Christmas lights. I know Steve does as well. We were just sharing some pictures of what we do at home, each of us. And I’m one of those where we kind of try to add a few things every year.
SPEAKER 03 :
Try to change it a little bit.
SPEAKER 15 :
Yeah, try to change it up a little bit and have a decent, I guess, display, you could say, at the end of the day. And it is a daunting task. There’s no doubt about it for all of you that are listening. Yeah, it is a daunting task. And back to Jeff from Montana’s point, yeah, don’t do anything whereby you’d risk life, limb, things like that. You don’t want to be doing something that’s festive in nature, and then have an accident happen out of it that would change things from that point forward, you’re better off not doing anything if that’s the case. Now, on the same token, this has gotten to be a bigger and bigger deal as well. There are now companies that will do your Christmas lights. And there’s multiple ways they do that. They’ll put your lights up. They’ll put their lights up and store them. Every one of those has a little different fee associated, but you can actually decorate your place and have it hired out. And for some people, depending upon, you know, your skill level, your time, you start doing the math on, you know, what do you make out in the field? the world, you know, on an hourly basis versus what they’re doing. And some of you may figure out that, you know, I can pay for this and still be ahead because I can go do more work doing something else than I can, you know, hang in lights. You just have to do the math. But there’s now a lot of different businesses. There’s even some franchises now that will hang and do your Christmas lights, your decorations and so on. And again, it can be A daunting task, in some cases, just getting everything out and ready to go can be a daunting task. So most of all, just have fun. This isn’t a contest to see who can outdo who. It’s not like Clark Griswold on vacation. christmas vacation you know you do whatever you want to do and whatever the neighbor does they do and most of all at the end of the day just have fun and some some of you out there listening you you guys are probably part of some of those uh blocks of houses whereby uh you know the the the tourists i call them will roll through the christmas tourists will roll through and look at all the different lights and displays and decorations and so on and then that part is fun so when we were kids one of the things we used to do and we still kind of do this even my wife and i you’ll drive around look at christmas lights during the christmas season so that’s always a fun thing to do as well but you run down to the city county building and look at that there’s also you know it used to be vandermeer had a big display i don’t think that’ll be happening this year with the sale i think they’re moving that over towards red rocks from what i had read i think they’re still going to try to do that display but they’re going to move it towards red rocks versus it being So kind of in that same area. But, yeah, there’s a lot of those types of displays where you guys can drive around and look and have a lot of fun. Zoo lights at the Denver Zoo and those sorts of things. So just, you know, oh, the botanical gardens as well. Thank you, Charlie. So, yeah, there’s all sorts of things. So even if you don’t get a chance to do your own home, you can still go view and have a great time. All right, we’ve got maybe, maybe a few. We’re not going to get to all of these. But this comes from Handyman.com. or family handyman.com different tips and some of these I’m going to avoid because some of them are pretty cheesy and the only reason I say that is because there’s other ways to do some of these I’m going to skip through some of these I’m not going to do all of these this one’s kind of cool I don’t know how it works Those of you that, you know, you use part of the caulking tube, and we’re always trying to figure out how do you save the end. Some guys put screws through it. Some guys will put tape on it. Some guys do all sorts of different things to try to keep that caulking now from drying out. I don’t know if this works or not, but on this particular suggestion, take a wine cork and put over the top of the caulking tube. and just shove it right over the top and supposedly that seals that up nice and tight again i don’t know i’ve never tried it never used it so it’s not something that i’ve done now this other one’s kind of neat this is interesting those of you that buy six packs of whatever booze or you know the real six packs with the handle on like a like a six pack of beer or whatever you can use that to organize your paint cans and your caulking tubes Cause they’ll stand right up in the six pack holder. So if you’ve got six tubes of caulking and you’ve got an old six, so in other words, don’t throw that six pack, you know, container thing away, the little cardboard container, use it in your shop or whatever, even inside of a shelf, you know, it keeps all of those things more organized and you’re ready to go do something. You know, maybe you’ve got some paint and some WD 40 and something else and whatever, and off you go. I learned something by the way on WD 40 and painting that is pretty handy. You can take the lid, so the straw and the top, to WD-40, which, keep in mind, most of the WD-40 cans now have the fold-down nozzle. You can fold it down and have a nice wide spray, or you can tip it up and shoot out of the nozzle. That fits a lot of spray paint cans. Oh, really? whereby if you’re wanting to, for example, use the nozzle and get into some little spot and paint something in tight where you’re not wanting the full fan, you can use the nozzle from the WD-40 to do so. You can also flip it down and still paint regularly, and here’s the catch. When you’re done, put it back on the WD-40 and squirt both of those through, and you just cleaned out your nozzle to your paint cans. and they’re always clean and ready to use that way. They’re not all crudded up with paint that dries on the nozzle that you’re always trying to scrape off with your fingernail or whatever the next time you use it. And I know there’s that old trick of turning the can upside down and spray painting that way, and that cleans the nozzle out and so on. But this way of doing it, you don’t even have to do any of that, meaning you’re not wasting as much paint because the WD-40, will do all of that for you so yeah a lot of paint cans you can take the nozzle off of the wd-40 itself and put it right on top of your paint can and use it to spray paint with now something else i learned the other day which most people don’t know this isn’t true with the wd-40 but a lot of paint nozzles so that the you know the we call them spray bombs your spray bombs most of those when you’re painting the fan is going up and down horizontally most people don’t know this but that nozzle can be turned 90 degrees so if you have something you’re painting where you want the fan going the other direction you just turn the nozzle and it will go the other direction so maybe you want to paint something up and down and have the fan going you know left to right and a lot of times i want it that way you can turn that and actually go up and down and paint that way so you’re not you’re running the can sideways and we’re doing this inside the studio where you can’t see our hand motions but if you’re wanting to paint something nice and wide and go up and down a wall or maybe there’s a pole that you’re painting or something along those lines you can literally turn the nozzle 90 degrees on the front of the spray nozzle itself that turns and now you can paint differently most people don’t know those things exist i didn’t i didn’t either until watching a video the other day where somebody was showing that can be done because i didn’t know that either after all of these years Being in the shop, and now some can’t. There are some that are straight, just it’s a fan spray pattern. There’s nothing you can do about it. But a lot of them, you’ll notice, have a little insert tip, and that tip can be rotated. But the WD-40 trick is about as good as any because you always have a nice, clean nozzle when you do that. Next one. Let me see. I’m going to skip through some of these because some of these are – okay, so if you’re going to paint a door, this is a pretty good one. They make devices for this where if you’re gonna paint a door and you’re gonna paint both sides or even stain it, shellac it, do whatever, and you’ve taken the door off and you’re trying to figure out how to do all of that without touching anything. Take two saw horses. go to the top of the door, bottom of the door, and just put a couple of long lag screws on each end. Now you’ve got the ability to rotate that door 360 degrees without having any special tools or anything other than just two sawhorses. So you literally just, it’s like putting a pin on each end, just center it up. so that you’re and you can rotate that around and work on that door and paint accordingly without having to do anything else this is a tip coming out of again this family handyman uh luminous light switches this isn’t a bad idea so if you’ve got you know regular toggle switches or whatever and you want to see them in the dark at night you don’t know where that switch is take a little bit of luminous paint and just paint the tip of the light switch. And then that will glow in the dark. I like that. That’s pretty cool. So if you have a really dark house, instead of buying a lighted switch and all that, just paint the tip of it. Then when it’s dark, you’ll be able to see that. uh here’s a phone shield that you now can all go by and nobody cares about any of that kind of stuff this one a lot of people have used over the years and there’s different ways to do this as well but that’s taking the tennis ball putting a string on it hanging it from the ceiling to where you know you’re pulling into the garage the same distance every single time you know hits the part of the windshield every time you see some of these hung up in garages and so on i don’t use these but some people find might find that handy and it just depends on They also now make little parking mat stops where as you’re pulling in, you kind of pull up over this little curb-ish thing, I guess you could call it, kind of set down in this foam or whatever. Yeah, they make them kind of out of a harder plastic and you set that down on the ground. You can even glue it to the ground if you want to so you pull into the garage. Some of you that may have a really tight parking place, you want to be careful as to how far you’re pulling in. Maybe there’s some tool cabinets or something like that up towards the front of the garage, and you want to make sure you’re not running into any of those. Yeah, you’ve got the ability to put these things. Literally, you can glue them to the floor, and they’re pretty handy, so something to think about along those lines. It’s basically parking guides, and there’s lots of those that you can do. as far as that goes uh this is kind of a handy idea there’s times where you’re working on back to that light switch you’ve taken the light switch out and maybe you’re going to add a light switch someplace you’re going to add an outlet and you’ve cut some drywall or you’re patching a piece of drywall or whatever take a paper sack take your blue masking tape tape the sack underneath the area that you’re working and all of that dust and junk will fall right into the sack So making a nice little catch base in there so it’s not just falling all over and you’re vacuuming it all up. Side note on vacuums, and I haven’t talked about this one yet. One of the best items I have bought next to the air inflator, so I have a Milwaukee tire air inflator that we talked about about a year ago. Well, about a year ago as well, I was in Home Depot and noticed they’ve got these cool cordless vacuums. And I know all of them make them. DeWalt makes them, Milwaukee, Makita, whoever. But a cordless shop vac, I will tell you, after owning one, I rarely pull my corded shop vac out. Literally, they’ve got just as much suction power as a regular shop vac has. They’re portable. If you’re going to vacuum the car or do anything along those lines or clean up something like I just mentioned a moment ago, you literally just pick it up, grab it, no cord needed. I like the Milwaukee one that I have. They are so slick. I mean, it is really the slickest thing ever. So again, just a little tip as far as that goes for some of you. Let’s see here. Okay, so here’s one where this isn’t a bad idea. This is more car related, more drive radio related. You can use pool noodles for all sorts of things. So let’s say, for example, you’re working on your car, but you’re close to the wall and you don’t want the door banging into the wall constantly. Cut a pool noodle, slice a pool noodle, just keep it whole, but slice it to where you can then take the pool noodle and put it right over the edge of that door. Or maybe you don’t have a truck and you’ve got sort of a pass-through back seat and you’re going to haul something that kind of sticks through the trunk, but you’re going to tie the trunk down. Take that pool noodle, put it on the bottom of the trunk and the top of the trunk so then nothing’s wearing the paint off or anything. You can tie everything nice and tight and keep it all solid and you’re not banging anything up on the car. Again, pool noodles come in handy for all sorts of things whereby you’re worried about banging things up. Do you all know what a pool noodle is? I just call them, they’re those styrofoam long noodles. I don’t know what else to call them. People wrap them around themselves, and they float, and they use them for all sorts of things. Kids use them in the pool itself, and a lot of adults will use it even for therapy and things like that. But, yeah, I don’t know what else to call them, pool noodle.
SPEAKER 03 :
And they have them at Home Depot. It’s basically like a pool noodle, but they’re more sliced with a little glue in them, too, if you like.
SPEAKER 15 :
you know for piping but you can use it all over you can use it for all sorts of stuff and by the way the pool noodles are much cheaper than even some of the other things that are out there because this time of year especially because summer’s over you’ll find these for little or nothing so not a bad idea just to have one or two pool noodles kicking around go stick them in the corner someplace you’ll find all sorts of little uses for them as far as you know they’re kind of like bumpers think of it that way it’s like a it’s like a foam bumper that you can use for just about anything and they work extremely extremely well um let’s see here going down the uh this is a good for those of you that are this is this is handy this is this is used in my industry actually if you’re doing some fall cleanup which a lot of you will be out doing right now and you’re trying to figure out you know how do i get all of these leaves raked up how do i get them into the trash and so on and so forth go get a tarp lay the tarp out in the yard put all of your you know evergreen needles leaves junk debris whatever throw it on top of the tarp When you’re done, gather the tarp up and take everything from the tarp. And if you’ve got a dumpster nearby, you can just toss that into a dumpster. If you’ve got a wheelbarrow, you can put that into a wheelbarrow and haul it off. If you’ve got trash bags and you’re trying to get that into a trash bag, it just makes everything much easier to go do something with on top of the tarp. than it is anywhere else. So those of you that have some of those big tarps, just lay those out in the yard, throw all of your debris and everything right on top of the tarp. Takes a couple of people when you’re done, but you can do it by yourself. You just gather all the corners together, drag off your tarp, and helps with your fall cleanup. It’s one of the tips here, but it’s also something that I’ve used over the years that makes it really, really easy as far as that goes. Let’s see here. Shop vac tips, which we just talked about a moment ago. Oh, how to find a flashlight in the dark. This one’s not bad. Take the glow-in-the-dark tape and wrap it around the handle of the flashlight. You’ll always know in pitch dark where the flashlight is, if it’s hanging on the wall or whatever, because you’ve got that. Now, with the advent of… cell phones and all of that that have flashlights and stuff built into them some of this stuff isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be but some of these are just nice little handy tips to let you know how to do things when that particular situation may arise all right that’s it fix it radio you can always go to fixitradio.com find all the things that we do there uh stay tuned we’ve got another program coming up next don’t go anywhere again fix it radio klz 560.
SPEAKER 09 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
