Thank you.
In the floor behind the chair.
This is America.
Does everybody know what time it is? Fix It Radio.
All right, it’s Fix It Radio, Klz 560. Thanks for joining us today, live program on the 21st of September. So if you’re listening to the Replay Show, you know what day it is.
Myself, Larry Unger, with me today, Charlie Grimes, of course, our engineer. Good morning, Larry.
Good morning, John. How’s things going with you?
Very nice, and we’re heading into the weekend. Little bit of rain maybe tonight into tomorrow, but we’ll see. It’s just a reminder that fall is not that far away, Larry.
The nights are cooling off.
Yes, they are. In the mountains, they’re supposedly supposed to be getting some snow this weekend.
So we shall see. Point being, we’re not that far away. We’re going to talk about some fall maintenance things that you ought to think about doing.
And Larry and I were talking about this prior to coming on air today. And I know for some, it might seem a little early, although not necessarily tonight, but tomorrow night. You may feel this a little more than you would in the past several nights.
And that is, check your furnace. So for some of you that, you know, furnace has been off all year, maybe you’ve got air conditioning, maybe you don’t. If you’ve got air conditioning, that side’s been running, but definitely the gas heat side hasn’t been.
May not be a bad idea, just sometime today, tomorrow, fire that thing up. Is it working? Have you done your filter change like you should be doing right now anyways?
All those different things. And if you’ve got any issues, I would tell you that you’re much better off calling the HVAC person now than you are a month from now.
If you wait for a month from now, you’re going to waste some time to get them to come out.
You’ll be in line. Let’s just say that.
Yes, you will. And it gets cold being in line.
So absolutely. So we’ll talk about some of those things, but that’s one of the first things that I would think this weekend, if you’re a furnace, if your house has a furnace, I should say. And everybody has different ways of heating their homes anymore.
I get that. Some use electric heat. Some have, you know, in-floor heat.
Some have hot water, you know, radiant heat. So it just depends on what you have. And you know your system or you should know your system.
And if you’re somebody that doesn’t normally do your own maintenance, at least, you know, if it’s this time of the year, the HVAC guys will even tell you that they’d rather be out now than they would be a month from now when they’re running around crazy. So get that get that finished up now as you can.
Well, it’s easier for them to schedule you in just to check it out. They don’t have to do anything. Just check you out and make sure that everything’s working.
It’s like back when we were when I was on an auto shops and working on cars and so on, it was my saying always was, it’s much easier and cheaper to maintain a car than it is to fix a car because you can plan for maintenance. You can’t plan for repairs necessarily. So this is a similar situation of that.
So, yeah, if you’ve got if you’re somebody that doesn’t do this yourself or you don’t have the ability. And I get that not everybody does. I was very fortunate growing up.
My dad was one of those where you just didn’t raise the white flag of surrender ever. You know, you did everything yourself and I was taught how to do a lot of things. But not everybody has been raised that way.
So in turn, if you’re somebody that’s to call that person, I would say call now and get that handled now versus on down the road. All right, we got a call coming in. Dennis, you’re up today first.
Go ahead.
Well, thank you. This is a automobile question.
That’s fine.
I need to take a jump start battery with me. Did you say, I think at one time, that battery tender was good or bad?
So you’re looking to start a car. So let me make sure I’m following you correctly. You’re leaving and you want to make sure that you can keep the battery fully charged or you’re trying to jump start something?
Well, where I’m going, I need to take that battery jump start with me.
Okay. So you need to make sure that you can still make sure I’m following you. You make sure you can start something remote.
When you get to wherever you’re going, you want to make sure you can start something else off of what you have.
Right. The days that you were talking about those jump start batteries, I wondered if the battery tender was a good or bad.
Battery tender is a device only to keep a battery charged. If you’re actually looking to jump start a car, you’ll need the little jump, we call them jump packs, little jump pack batteries, and they come in all various sizes.
Correct. But there was, I’ve seen a battery, battery tender brand, but they do have a jump start.
Interesting. That I’m not as familiar with because I’ve not, I’ve not, I’ve not, I don’t have any experience. I’ve used some of the core CORE products that Napa sells and they are, they work very, very well.
That’s what I would buy. And they, they come in Dennis literally about every configuration from, you know, small jump boxes that will start, you know, a four-cylinder car, for example, all the way up to jump packs. It’ll do full diesel, you know, diesel trucks and so on and everything in between.
Could CORE, is that what you said?
CORE, exactly.
Right, okay, I’ll stop by Napa’s main store when I headed out of town. There you go.
Yeah, now, and they will, I was trying to log in to my Napa account really quick. I’m not quite fast enough here. I would give you exactly all of that.
But yeah, no, that’s exactly what you need to do. And they’ll have a pretty good selection. In fact, what part of town are you in, Dennis?
Southeast Aurora.
Oh, the, okay, so Southeast Aurora, you’re, let me think here. I mean, most of your Napa stores in Aurora are going to be pretty fully stocked. You’re not far from the main distribution center.
So if you go to a store and they don’t have what you need, the distribution center is, you know, 72nd and Washington basically in that area. Worst comes to worst, you drive over there to the main warehouse and they’ll have everything.
That’s normally what I do, but I’m by your radio station really.
Okay, so you’re down here. Yeah, the Napa store is down here. They’re, you know, they’re non-company owned stores in this area.
They’re owned by a private individual, but they’ve got good inventory. You won’t have any trouble there.
Okay, I normally shop at the factory store, what do you want me to call it?
Sure.
I appreciate what you’re…
No, and the core brand, again, that would be the one that I would look at from Napa. And somebody had this question earlier in the week that I got a text message in, Dennis. I’m glad you brought this up.
There’s also some brands, I think Norco, that’s sold at Costco and some of those places. They’re not a bad brand either, but I’ve got more familiarity with the core product that Napa sells.
Okay. I appreciate your information and thank you very much.
You are very welcome, Dennis. Great, great phone call. That doesn’t matter if that’s on Fix It Radio or Drive Radio.
That really kind of affects everybody. Whether you’re at home, you’re out traveling, whatever you’re doing. Yeah, that one affects everybody.
And just to make sure that we were clear on that as well, the Battery Tender brand, that is the name, even though they make battery maintainers, let me say it that way, they call it Tender. That’s a name brand, though. So Battery Tender is a name brand.
And what Dennis was saying is they now make jump boxes. Now, I would not be opposed to a Battery Tender jump box, knowing the quality of all of their other products. I just have never used one and I’m not familiar with that particular brand used that way.
As long as they have a lithium battery in itself, they’re usually pretty good.
Yeah, and again, that just happens to be a brand in that device that I’ve not had any familiarity with. I’ve had it with a lot of other things. Really quick, too, when it comes to those particular devices, and this is to Larry’s point, the better they’re built battery-wise, the longer they last.
The one thing I’ve noticed about some of those devices is they may work really well the first six months or so, and then they’re no good after that because the battery inside goes bad, and by the time you replace that battery, you are spending more money than what the whole unit’s worth. And yeah, and I’m on Battery Tender’s site, and yes, they’ve got a jumpstart device, I guess I could say they’ve actually got a few of them, and yeah, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy that brand at all. It’s a solid brand.
They do a good job. I wouldn’t have a problem buying it. I just don’t have any familiarity with it.
Well, the biggest problem I’ve found with any of them is typically you’ll put them in your trunk and you leave them sit there for…
You forget about them.
Yeah, and you don’t recharge them or keep them charged up.
Correct.
And then when you go to use them, they don’t work.
That’s exactly right. So anyways, that’s a good one, Dennis. And Napa will have, couldn’t even have the Battery Tender brand, if that’s something you’re interested in.
They may have that, but the Cora brand works extremely well also. Joe, you’re next.
John, a couple of things on the Summer, Winter changeover. First of all, if you need a furnace or AC unit replaced, you’ll never get a better price than now in the HVAC business. We call it the Valley of Death.
Right. Good point.
Yeah, because there’s, anyway, but three or four things, particularly if Dan Muir is listening, in addition to changing your air filters, you want to turn your whole house humidifier off. And if you have a shut-off valve, you want to turn the little shut-off valve in the copper line, because you don’t want to be running your humidifier in the winter. I’m sorry.
You want to run it in the winter. You want to turn it on now.
I’m sorry. You want to turn it back on.
Yeah, well, and really quick, for those that maybe aren’t going to run AC any longer on the same token, Joe, here in Colorado, it’s still going to be 80 next weekend, may want to wait a couple of weeks on that one, maybe.
Right, but whenever you decide it’s time to change over…
You do your switch over, yeah.
Hopefully you did… Right, you hopefully… And then your little sump pump, you know, your AC has been making condensate all summer.
Right.
And that’s a little box, you know, about half the size of a shoe box down on the floor. You want to lift the lid and dump out the crap and all the dead bugs, and if there’s any algae or mold, you want to clean that. Oh, and on your whole house humidifier, you want to open it up.
There’s a filter element in there that’s probably all caked up with minerals. You want to pull that out before you throw it away, order a new one or order two or three, so you’ll have them actually, again, we’re back to saying, you want to check that because you want it running in the wintertime, and if it’s already caked up with minerals, you want to get a new one in there to take you through the winter because if the old one’s full on minerals, it’s not going to give you the humidification efficiency that you’re looking for.
Good point.
That’s my other suggestion on some of the winter change over. Last thing, John, the big box stores are literally almost giving away mulch. If you need mulch, I mean, the other day it was-
Yeah, end of the year, same situation. Yeah, good point.
Ten bags for six bucks. John, it’s a box that’s less than a $1.50 a bag. If you need any mulch and there’s a big box store near that has it, I mean, they don’t want to carry through the winter.
They’re just trying to get rid of it. So now’s the time to buy mulch if you need any.
So yeah, great point. Really quick, Joe, that would be for some of you listening, there’s other types of products. A lot of times they will put on clearance.
I gave you all a story a few weeks ago of a couple of years ago, I was able to buy all of the Roundup that our local Home Depot had, and it was literally normally $27 a gallon and a half is about what they come in, about 27 bucks for that. They were $2.70, Joe. I bought all of them that they had.
Barbecue grills, two years ago, I got an $1,100 barbecue grill for $350.
Yeah. No, this is the time of the year when it comes to summer things, and folks listening, could be patio furniture, umbrellas, grills. Joe, any of that sort of stuff that you would normally go out and buy in May, if it’s something that you can go ahead and buy now in store and save the money on it, why not?
Yeah. Lawn mower, you know.
Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Don’t buy a snow blower right now. They’re going to be the highest.
No, they’re going to be highest, but again, either a riding mower or a self-propelled gas mower, or even a battery mower for that, that’s what your thing is.
Right.
Now’s the time to buy them. They’re starting to give that stuff away.
Absolutely. Yeah. Those of you that have some of that ability where, you know, I always say, Joe, never buy when you need it, buy when you don’t, because the price will be much lower when you don’t need it versus when you absolutely have to have it.
Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s, again, barbecue grills, mowers, mulch, patio furniture.
You know, they’re going to, the deals are going to be incredible if they are already incredible.
Absolutely.
That’s my recommendation.
And also one other tip on that, that I’ve also found even in big box stores. If you’re looking at something like that, and let’s say, for example, Joe, they’ve got the mulch down to a dollar a bag and there’s 30 bags left and you want them all. Go get the manager and see what kind of an additional deal he’ll give you to clear all of them out.
You might be surprised at what they’ll do.
You know, my wife said that with some shrubbery. She was looking at some shrubbery. They hadn’t marked them down yet, but it was this time of year and so she said to the guy, you know, how much would you take for these?
She said, I’m not going to tell you. I think it was like, you know, 30 bucks a piece and he said, he just said 15.
The managers have, I mean, they’re wanting to clear those things out to make room for new inventory. They know they’ve got coming in or in this case, they’re just getting close to the outside, you know, landscape center down anyway. So the reality is, they want to get rid of some of that stuff.
Never hesitate, especially if you’re going to buy more than one of those items, never hesitate to get the manager and say, hey, what kind of a deal will you make me? They will.
They will.
Absolutely. Absolutely. They’ll be also.
Yeah.
Good stuff, John. Good stuff.
Thanks, Joe. Appreciate you very much, man. Have a good one.
And yeah, folks, I mean that sincerely. If you’re looking at different things where you’re thinking, you know, we probably should have done this this year, but you know, we just hesitated. We didn’t.
But I’d like to have it for next summer. Okay. Well, do your shopping now.
The next month or two, again, doesn’t have to be tomorrow, but in the next month or two, to Joe’s point, you’ll find some of these things not only already marked down, but then depending upon what the item is, you may very well be able to go to the manager and say, hey, I’d like to get a better deal on such and such. And you know, again, maybe you’re buying everything that they’ve got that’s left. Okay, great, tell them that and you would be surprised.
Now, I’m not saying we need to do let’s make a deal on everything you go in and buy. I’m not saying that because no one likes that guy. But in these circumstances where, you know, you want to add a few shrubs to your house and you go to Home Depot and there’s five of those left and you want to buy all five, okay, well, get the manager, even the lawn care, you know, the lawn and garden guy, gal, whoever it happens to be, you know, bring them over and say, listen, I’d like to buy the rest of what you have left here.
What’s your bottom dollar deal? They’ll go over to the computer, figure that out and tell you what it is. It’s not a big secret and they’ll give you a price and typically, typically it’ll be less than what they’ve got them already marked down to.
That’s actually kind of amazing because most people don’t think you can do that in a big box store, but you can.
You have to be selective, but yes, you can be.
Yeah, and you know, if you’re going in to buy a single two by four, no, they’re not going to help you with buying a single two by four. That’s not what I’m talking about. But the other thing that they’ll make you deals on as well is you go in and you look at something to where maybe there’s a little bit of damage on it, and you’re like, I don’t want to pay full price for this.
It’s got some nicks or scratches or that barbecue grill that Joe’s talking about. For example, you may walk in and say, well, this thing’s got a little bit of damage on it. I don’t want to pay full price.
Then tell them.
Sure.
Tell them they’re liable to give you a deal on that because of that. But here again, what’s that old saying, Larry, you have not because you ask not?
Well, not only that, but what’s the worst they can say?
No.
Exactly.
And then you make a decision whether you want to buy it or not.
Sure.
At the end of the day. So you’re not hurting anything by asking. Bill and Lakewood, you’re next.
Hey, jump box wise, don’t buy one at Harbor Freight because I bought one and it’s sitting against the wall, never used. It just didn’t work.
Yeah, I’ve never bought those types of items there. I’ve only ever, as I was telling Dennis earlier, I’ve only ever bought the high quality stuff that Napa sells. I’ve never bought any of the quote unquote off brands of those.
And I bought one online. It works great.
You know, I don’t want to be bad mouthing some of those guys that are out there because there may be some good products, but when I’m trying to jump start something and that’s what you’re relying on, I don’t want to be left in the cold.
Well, yeah, well, I know. I just, yeah, the one I got it online, it’s like, I can’t read it. It’s JNC.
Is that what you said?
JNC is a good brand as well. There’s nothing wrong with that. Core is another one.
But JNC is all right as well.
Yeah, it works good. It works great. I’ll hook her up in the thoughts.
Okay. I just thought I’d let him know.
No, that’s a great idea. No, thanks, Bill. I appreciate that.
Somebody also just said leaf blowers. They just bought a 30% off and there was also a rebate on it. It took a $350 battery-powered leaf blower down to $200.
The battery alone would have been that much. In this case, this particular texter said so. There you go, folks.
That’s a great example of what Joe was talking about earlier. So if you’ve got the ability to do some shopping now, save some money, it’s something that you’re going to go ahead and use next year anyways, or you’re looking to upgrade something that you currently have. In that case, we’re not talking about the winter things.
Like I said, you’re not going to buy a snowblower right now because they’re going to be high. I’m talking you buy snowblowers in May and you buy lawn mowers in September and October.
Oh, and the other thing on top of the lawn mowers, thinking about that, depending on your city, I know my city has decided they want to go all electric lawnmowers. So when you buy a new lawnmower, it’s going to have to be electric. Consider that when you’re buying one.
Yes. And before everybody poo-poos that, I’ll be straight up honest. They have come a long way from where they used to be.
And some of them work extremely well. And for some of you that don’t have huge yards, I mean, honestly, for the amount of hassle you have with a gas-powered mower, some of these battery-powered units will mow your lawn probably a month before you even have to recharge the battery, because some of them will last that long. I mean, some of you aren’t mowing more than 30 minutes, maybe, max, if that, depending upon the size of your yard.
The reality is, for a lot of you, you can use an electric mower and they work absolutely fantastic. And remember, if you’re buying the same unit that you have of some of your other power tools, you may very well even be then sharing batteries back and forth and there’s nothing wrong with that. So we’re going to take a quick break.
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All right, we are back, Fix It Radio, Klz560. Thanks for joining us today, by the way. We appreciate it very much.
Text message came in, by the way, talking about our discounts at Big Box stores. This person said they had a friend that worked at Home Depot, and in that case, they were authorized to give up to a $50 discount without really having to go do much of anything else. So thank you for that.
That just reconfirmed some of the things we were talking about earlier. Greg and Parker, you’re next.
Hey, John, I’m enjoying your show again today and all your shows. So, I had a question. I was told by a plumber that it probably would be a good idea for me to put, I think he called it a limestone filter like after, where the drainage is from a water heater in the furnace, that’s acidity water.
Yep, it’s funny you say that. Larry and I were talking about the very thing, that very same thing today, mainly because I have a hot water, you know, I’ve got a hot water heater system, you know, hot water heat system in my home. And on the high-efficiency hot water heaters, I actually have to have, my brand is a Triangle II, but think of a Renai.
They have those built on to the drain system because those will automatically build condensation. And I just ordered refill, they make some pellets that go inside of those filters, I guess you could say. They’re like these stone pellets, I guess you could say.
And you need to change those out about every other year. So I just ordered packs for mine this morning, knowing that’s something I got to do here in the next couple of weeks. It’s interesting you just said that, Greg.
Yeah.
That should be something I can install myself.
Absolutely. In fact, I was just looking. Again, funny you say this because I was just looking at this today.
You can buy the filter kits on Amazon. I was looking at that this morning. So you can actually buy the refill pellets or you can buy the actual filter assembly.
They’re about a hundred bucks for the filter assembly on Amazon.
Okay. Could I run the water heater and the furnace through just one filter?
I’d probably do two separate ones if it were me. A, the plumbing of it would be a little easier. I mean, you could, yes.
You’re going to change the pellets a little more often if you do that. And now, here’s the other thing, too. Are you on septic, I’m assuming?
Yes. And that’s the only reason. For everybody listening, this is a septic system thing only because of the acidity that’s coming out of the water.
To his point, Greg, he’s 100% correct. Those that are on city sewer, no need to mess with any of this. It’s not a requirement on your end.
But those of you that are on a septic system, that have high efficiency furnaces and hot water heaters and so on, where that condensation is coming out of that unit, it’s very high in acidity. And yes, we want to get that pH level back down before it goes into the septic system.
Right. Yeah, I’ve got a tankless water heater.
There you go.
That came up and they were like, yeah, that puts out a lot of acidity.
It does. I’m surprised they didn’t install that as a part of the unit itself, Greg. I’m kind of surprised at that.
Yeah, who knows? That’s a long story.
Well, and you can add one. They’re PVC. I mean, these filter things are PVC.
And they’re all over the map. I see some of them on here that are 33 bucks. The ones like I have on my unit are about 100 bucks.
They’re capped at both ends where you can disassemble them, clean the inside out, re-add the pellets on down the road. The pellet packs are about $35. I just ordered a couple of packs for mine.
Sorry, $19.35. They’re $19.97. So, pellet packs, $19.97.
Okay, sounds good.
I would do one where you can change those pellets out. I would not do a disposable one. Do one where you can change the insides of it out.
Sounds good. And John, I had another question. And what would be the best way to, I guess, get internet down to my shop area, which is, you know, maybe 50, 80 feet from our house.
But I’d like to have internet down in the shop area. It’s a separate building. Okay.
A pole building. Is there a good way to get internet from the house down to there?
The best way, now, there’s several ways you can do it. They make Wi-Fi devices where you can shoot a signal from the house down there, pick it back up. But honestly, for the cost of that, you could literally buy underground Cat 6 cabling, bury that in the ground and just run again.
It doesn’t have to be very far down. If you mark it, know where it is so you don’t cut it on down the road. And you could even encase that in some PVC tubing if you wanted to.
But I would just bury a Cat 6 line from one to the other, knowing it’s not that far.
Okay. All right. I just wonder if that, you know, if the wireless or…
The wireless sucks. I’ve been there, done that. And in my shop, I’ve got an actual wire now.
Originally, I was doing it wirelessly. Finally went to the wired way of doing it, Greg. And the wired way is just the only way to go, in my opinion.
Okay. Well, when we built the house and the shop, I actually put two, I think it was three inch tubes that go between the shop, the house. I’ve never snaked anything through them yet.
Did you leave a string in it by chance? Did you happen to do that or no?
No, I didn’t do that.
Well, so here’s a thought. As you do this next one, add the string at the same time, so the next time you go to pull it, you’ve already got a string there.
Yep. I’m going to pull two or three strings.
There you go. There you go. That way, next time you do it, just tie it on one end and, as you know, yank it through.
But if you’ve got that much of a sleeve there, you won’t have much trouble pushing that through.
So, yeah.
Because really quick, Greg, the Cat 5 Underground, because I’d still run, even though you’ve sleeved it, I’d still run Underground Cat 5 just because it’ll be easier to push through because the casing on it is so heavy that you literally will be able to just push that through. Regular Cat 5 will get all wound up, but the heavy Underground Cat 5 with the extra sheathing on it, you’ll be able to push that right through.
Oh, OK. All right. And that’ll go around a corner.
Oh, yeah, that stuff. I mean, Cat 5 Underground is almost like Coax. Think of it that way only.
It’s probably a little stiffer than even Coax.
OK. Now, is that Cat 5 or Cat 6?
Cat 6 I would buy just because that’s kind of the standard now. It’s just got different twists to it over what Cat 5 has. It’s basically that looks the same.
It’s just the way they’ve built it internally to carry more data.
OK. And I can just plug that right into my router then, right?
Yeah. Go ahead and buy the tool where you can put your ends on yourself, which again, those are available on Amazon as well. And there’s plenty of tutorials on how to put the ends on it.
But yeah, I would just run straight cable through, put an end on each end, go put another whatever you’re using as your Wi-Fi hotspot in the house, use the same one out in the barn and off you go. Done deal, keep it universal that way.
All right, appreciate it.
That’s what I’ve done and it works very well.
Yeah, I need to get on your website because I didn’t catch all of your Ready Radio yesterday, but it sounded pretty intro.
We had some good stuff on there, so yes, we did actually. So, anything you guys ever need, by all means, just text me or email me and I can answer it that way also, Greg.
Yep, we did that before.
All right, man, appreciate you, Greg. You bet, take care. And for those that have that need that Greg was talking about on the hot water heater, the water heater or the furnace, it’s called a Condensate Neutralizer Kit.
And they’re sold by all sorts of different companies, Renai, et cetera, because of the way those are made and how they create acidity in the water through all of that condensation. And you can buy those kits on Amazon for about 115 bucks, which, by the way, if you can plumb that in yourself, will be far less than what the plumbers will charge you. And they’re real easy to install.
When you look at one, you’ll know exactly what I mean by that. Mike, you’re next.
Hi, John.
How you doing?
Hey, I’m good, it’s fine. Hey, I bought a 2008 Audi for my son, and I think we need the injectors clean. I noticed there’s some quick change places, like oil places in town, that have an injector cleaner price up there.
How do you think that would work out?
Not very well. Most of those folks, sorry, they just aren’t trained in what to do. That’s one of those where I would have somebody looking at it, putting a scan tool on it first, making sure that we know exactly where we’re at.
As we clean it, they know exactly what they’re doing, and if the cleaning is actually doing what it’s supposed to or not. And especially on direct injection engines, which is what you have, yeah, you need to do that correctly. I mean, no offense, Mike, if you’re going to go to one of those places, just go to BG at Napa, get a can of 44K and dump in.
You’ll be just as far ahead as you will with what those guys are going to do. And I’m not exaggerating.
Yeah, that was going to be my first resort. Now, it’s a six cylinder car. How much do you think it actually costs to take it in somewhere and have it done professionally?
A full bore intake slash injection cleaning will be three to four hundred. Done professionally and correctly.
Right, and do those injectors come apart? Do you actually pull one out?
No. I mean, I mean some of the high end repair places can get them apart and rebuild them and so on. But even then very few shops will even go that route.
You’re buying, if you need injectors, you’re buying new injectors. Very few people will run rebuilt injectors.
What would an injector go for? You said?
I’d have to look that one up top of my head on that car. I have no idea. I would have to look, Mike.
I don’t know.
I don’t know if the injectors are worn out or if they need to be cleaned, but I guess I’ll just take it in. I’ll try to drive the B&G first and then if that doesn’t work out.
Yeah, put it in 44K. You’re not going to hurt anything by doing that.
Cool.
All right. No, Mike, appreciate you very much. Thanks for the phone call.
And really quick back to some of the things even that we were talking about with Mike on the internet end of things. If any of you need guidance on some of that and what I was talking about and want some specific part numbers or application numbers, let me know and I can send those. Those are things that I’ve done at my property, so kind of familiar with both ends of that.
And yeah, I’m just not a fan of doing the wireless end of things. A lot of guys do that, but I end up monkeying. You end up monkeying around more with doing that than if you just run a cable and be done with it at the end of the day.
Bill, go ahead.
Hey, just on that guy with the router. Mine, I did an experiment because I got an old neighbor that doesn’t have internet. So, I went across the street with my laptop, and I’m picking up mine across the street.
And mine is just whatever Century Link sent me.
Yeah, and that’s, you know, for some people, you could do that, although the problem, Bill, and I have the same issue. When you get into a metal building, Metal Barn, which I’m assuming is what Mike has, or what Greg has, it doesn’t go through that metal very well.
And then also, you know, I think you have to have it up high a little bit, which helps it.
Yeah, but if he’s trying to do some things inside the barn and put some, you know, Wi-Fi out there and so on, the cable, if he’s got a sleeve already, a cable is easy. That’s the best way to do it. Okay.
You bet. No, Bill, appreciate it very much. And yeah, a lot of the Wi-Fi devices have gotten much better.
And for those of you that know what the mesh systems are, they work extremely well also. Although when you’re going that distance that we were just talking about with Greg, just again, for those of you, and if you’re getting ready to build a barn or doing anything along those lines, the sleeve idea is great. You can always run additional wires if you need to in this particular case.
And the other reason why I would recommend doing the underground Cat 6 is if, for example, he’s already got some other wires running in that sleeve, electric power wires, for example, and they will tell you not to run electric power next to the Cat 5 because you could get some issues that way. If you run the underground cabling, though, for the Cat 6, again, just another safety precaution where if you ever did have another power line running down, that you wouldn’t have any issues along those lines. All right, let’s take our last break.
Myself, Larry Unger, Fix It Radio, Klz 560.
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All right, we are back. Fix It Radio Klz 560. Mark and Wiggins, what’s going on?
Hey, good morning. I was just talking about the running internet to a shop, and I kind of thought about that myself, because yeah, you’re right, the wireless thing stinks. But so my question is, I’ve got a 220 power, or electrical running to the shed, or to the building, and I was curious if you ran one of those Cat 5 or Cat 6 cables next to the power line, would that interfere with the data?
Yeah, they tell you it will, and that’s where if I were going to do that, I would only use underground Cat 6, because it’s got extra sheathing and stuff on it for the interference. You’re not supposed to do it, period. But Mark, I would tell you that if you did it the way I’m talking, your chances of having any data loss or anything along those lines would be pretty slim.
Okay, so like if you use the Cat 6, you’d probably be okay. But if you don’t, how much of a difference…
Cat 6 underground, because it’s got extra sheathing on it than what regular Cat 6 or Cat 5 would have.
Oh, okay. So I didn’t realize there was a difference.
Yeah, the underground wiring, i.e. even similar to what you would run with, 120 volt wiring, Romec, underground Romex, it’s not underground Romex, but you get what I’m saying. I mean, if you look at underground approved wire versus regular in-house wiring, big difference, same is true on the Cat 6 underground versus not being underground.
Right. Yeah, that’s what I used. It was the underground cable.
Great.
Perfect.
And I’ve tried the wireless thing, several different configurations. Even like the repeater deal.
It sucks.
It can’t work.
No, I’ve done it. I’ve tried it as well, Mark. It just, as much as a lot of these guys will tout it, and if you want to spend big dollars, yes, there’s the ability to run some signaling from one dish to another sort of a thing.
But Mark, even then, bad weather, etc., will still have an effect on that where the cabling doesn’t.
Right. Like the second question, why gotcha? So I’ve got a bunch of generators, and most of them are the bigger ones use like the lead acid batteries, which the Battery Doctor charger works fine with.
I’ve got one particular battery. It’s tiny, and it’s a lithium ion battery pack. That when I plug it in or connect it to the Battery Doctor, it freaks out and says, no go, I’m not doing it.
You need a special battery tender. Really, you need an AGM style battery tender for that, Mark, because they have a different, well, to keep it simplistic, they just have a different way of maintaining that battery than a regular 12 volt charger would.
Got it. Yeah, because even the one they sent with it looked like it was a regular charger. And I thought, how is that going to work if the one I have doesn’t work?
It’s not.
It’s not. It’s not going to change anything.
You are correct. That lithium battery takes a different type of charger maintainer, I should say, than what the other one does. Got it.
Absolutely.
All right. Thanks, Fred. Have a great day.
You’re very welcome, Mark. Appreciate it. Good question, by the way.
And for those you’ll be listening to, you can go look up the difference between Cat 5, Cat 6. It’s really just the way that the cables are constructed, the frequency that they can use. They’ll both go up to a gigabit, but the frequency level is different from one to another.
It has to do with the thickness of the wire and so on, just the way that it’s constructed. You’ll normally notice, too, that Cat 6 is a little thicker wire overall than what Cat 5 is. Go ahead, Jeff.
Hey, hey, hey.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Really, we…
One of the things, I didn’t hear you mention it, you might have, but is that one of the reasons, another reason for using the outdoor Cat 6 is rodents.
That too, yeah. Now, in his case, he’s got it all sleeved, but I would, I mean, yes, for that also. They can’t chew it as easily.
Right, that’s one reason why that’s seething is so much easier.
Even in the barn itself, I think the underground Cat 6 is a better way of doing it than just regular indoor wiring.
Yeah, because you never know what you’re going to get out of it.
Exactly, absolutely.
Right, and you were talking about discharge from high-efficiency boilers and stuff, and it brought to mind when I was putting in a water softener, I was really researching how to do it because conventional wisdom said that you don’t discharge into your septic system, and I’m on a septic out here. And so I was going to run it outside, but then there was freezing issues and stuff. And after doing the research, I elected to actually run it into my septic with the option of maybe changing it if we ran into problems.
And that was seven years ago, and I just this past summer had the guy out to pump my tank and do all the stuff. He says, You’re going fine. As a matter of fact, you can probably go another year with what you’re doing rather than culling me out.
And I want to say that because that amount of condensate that comes out of a boiler is highly acidic.
Yes.
If you can neutralize it, that’s fine. But there’s not that much of it.
There’s not a ton. No, and I guess it’s more probably, Jeff, just to be precautionary. I mean, we try to keep the septic systems as clean as we possibly can.
To your point, I mean, depending upon the size of the septic system you’ve got, and if you’ve got, for example, a 1500 gallon holding tank, the little bit coming out of there probably isn’t enough to make a big deal. Although for 100 bucks and a little plumbing, is it worth adding it? I would.
Yeah, I mean, I’m not trying to dissuade anybody from doing it. I just don’t, if people look and go, oh my God, I don’t have this, what am I doing to my septic system? Well, probably nothing.
Go ahead and put it on there.
Probably nothing more than you are with the cleaning chemicals you’re using in some of the other things inside your house when it’s all said and done, I’m guessing, right?
Exactly, I was gonna bring, that came to my mind as we were talking that, you know, a lot of people say, oh, don’t use bleach in your laundry if you’re on a septic because you’re going to destroy the bacteria in your tank. And again, it’s a matter of quantity, you know, if you put in a quarter of a cup, half a cup of bleach in the laundry, first of all, most of that’s probably going to be used up anyway because folks don’t know, I worked with a guy one time who tried to convince people that chlorine was absorbed by your skin because he’d say, you know, test a cup of water with a chlorine strip and put your finger in there and stir it around and then test it with a strip and you’ll find the strip doesn’t test. He said that means all the chlorine went into your finger and it didn’t.
It meant that the oils on your finger reacted with the chlorine, change it to another chemical and the strip can’t protect it.
Correct.
So that’s what’s going to happen is that any unreacted bleach is going to go down your line. With all the bacteria and oil and crap that’s in your line, I doubt that any of that bleach is actually going to make it into the septic system.
I would not doubt that, Jeff. Do I lose any sleep over even how often I service mine? Because I’ll be the first to tell you.
You’re supposed to service them every year. I do mine about every other. I look at them when they really start getting nasty looking.
I’ll go ahead and service them, but I’ll be the first to tell you I don’t do it annually like I’m supposed to. I’ll do it every other year mainly because of what you’re saying. It’s just not something I’m going to lose sleep over.
Yeah, well, there’s only three of us normally in the house. We have another guest here for about a six month period. But when I had it pumped as a precaution and checked out initially, he told me five years.
Yeah, I think when I’m like you, when there’s only a couple of people living in the house and you’re like me, I don’t, you know, when I had kids and all of that living at home, yeah, I’d pump it every two to three years. But with just two of us, I think four to five years is fine. Personally, I know they’ll tell you do it more often than that, but I’m with you, Jeff.
Well, this guy’s an honest guy. He said, now you can go another year. You can go six.
So he was basically affecting his business, but he didn’t care because.
Well, no, he actually just gained business down the road. You’re going to call him before anybody else.
Bingo. So, so yeah, don’t, you know, as they say, the dose makes the poison, you know, everything is poisonous. If you salt is bad for you, water is free if you drink too much.
So, you know, a lot of bleach, don’t pour a gallon of bleach down into your septic system.
Right.
If you’re putting a half a cup of bleach in your laundry, a quarter cup, once a week, you’re not going to hurt anything.
It’s not a big deal.
It is not going to. It isn’t any different than some of the toilet bowl cleaners and other things that you’re using as well, Jeff. And let’s face it, there’s enough stuff going down that, again, if you’re just doing your best to not put some of the other nasty things down, they can end up down the drain and you’re just really mindful of what you’re putting down, you’re fine.
Biggest issue for me personally that I think on septic systems that a lot of people that have never had them have to learn is the solids that are going down. You have to be really careful with, you know, you can’t put, for example, flushable wipes and things like that. And even the guys at the septic, the sewer plant will tell you that that’s some of the worst things that even go down the regular sewer system.
But, you know, the septic system, that is a huge no-no. You can’t do that.
No, septic safe wipes are not.
No, they are not. You just don’t put them. For all of you listening, just don’t use them.
Trust me, it’s not worth it.
And also, hair. You know, a lot of people will, particularly women, because they normally have long hair, will clean their brushes out and then let that flush into the toilet.
And it’s like, no, throw that in the trash.
I saw the blob that came out and it was mostly hair. So that’s what’s going to plug up your screen.
Yep. No, you’re exactly right. Yeah.
Those are things where maintain those things. And again, is really, is it bad having a septic system? Personally, I would say no.
In fact, there’s times where end of the world type scenarios, I would prefer that. But yes, you have to be more careful in what you’re doing with them.
That’s right. It’s your system. It’s not somebody else’s system that you connect to and pay a monthly fee for.
Correct.
Correct.
So it’s like if you’re running a car, you don’t have to worry about an oil change. But if you own a car or lease a car, you do.
Absolutely.
Good stuff.
But it’s better for you in the long run.
Absolutely, Jeff. Absolutely. Appreciate you, man.
Somebody also texted and said that there are some in the industry that will tell you that lightning protection and so on, that if you’re running cables from one building to another to be really careful that you’ve got some potential for feedback from lightning and so on. And yeah, I guess you could see that I would just make sure that you’re grounded well on both ends. You know, knock on wood, personally speaking, I’ve done what we were talking about with Greg earlier for seven or eight years now with literally no issues whatsoever.
Again, is that again, it’s sort of like Jeff talking about the filtering of that acidic water before it goes to the septic system. Am I going to lose any sleep over that? No.
Am I going to be careful though and still do the things necessary to maintain it and so on? Absolutely. But I will just tell you, you guys all know this.
There are some things you can just go so overboard on. At the end of the day, it’s like, okay, if you had all the money in the world, go for it. But most don’t.
So you have to find that happy medium as to what works for you. And then just move on and don’t lose any sleep over it. That’s my thought process.
I mean, worst case scenario on the Cat 6 running between the two, something happens. I mean, at the end of the day, you might blow out a hub or a switch on each end. Okay, those things are cheap enough now that go throw another one in and don’t worry about it.
I mean, you’re not talking huge expense on either end if something like that were to happen. And again, I’ve done it personally for a number of years now with little to no, what, with no issues whatsoever. And I’ve tried all of the wireless things that are out there.
And there’s lots of companies that will even build point to point connections and so on to where you don’t have to run wiring and so on. And I’ll just tell you firsthand that while it works, it doesn’t work anywhere as close to as well as what a solid cable does.
Less interference.
Yeah, it’s like, well, for example, those of you that have dish network versus cable, when you have big, bad storms and even heavy thunderstorms, your dish and or direct TV can actually have some interruption of services, depending upon what things are doing in the weather as far as that goes, where chances of you losing anything cable wise, because it’s all either on a pole or buried, and the reality is it’s a direct signal. It’s not relying on what I just said. Again, the reality of it going out is pretty slim.
And if it goes out, it’s not something typically related to whether it’s going to have something to do with something else. So again, at the end of the day, it’s pretty hard, Larry, to beat a hardwired point to point connection at the end of the day. Exactly.
That’s it’s just hard to beat that. So guys, again, thank you so much. We got off on some areas today that I wasn’t planning on.
I’ll talk about some fall home maintenance next week as we come back. In the meantime, don’t forget, you can always text me a question 307-200-8222. You can also send me an email.
Just go to fixitradio.com and fill out the form and it’ll pop me an email as well. But either way, text me, email me. Guys, have a great rest of your day.
If you’re listening to the replay show, thank you so much. We’ll be right back. This is KLZ 560.
The views and opinions expressed on Klz560 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. Klz560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and Country station.