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June 19, 1996 - Bill Cooper
01:00:46
Joe the Carpenter
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Time Text
Thank you.
Thank you.
You're listening to The Hour of the Time.
I'm Pooh.
And I'm William Cooper.
You're listening to The Hour of the Time.
I'm Pooh.
And I'm William Cooper.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Well, thank you, my dear.
You're welcome.
And, uh, let me see.
I forgot to do something, didn't I?
Let me get this dude up here.
We've got, uh, something special tonight, huh?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Don't go away, folks.
We'll be right back after this very short pause.
We'll talk about our special treats.
Thank you.
Well, you know what?
That didn't work too well because I forgot to look down at the bottom of that little thing there and bring this really all the way up to where it's supposed to be.
Oops, man, I really goofed on that too.
Okay, almost.
We almost got it.
I can't believe it.
Here we go.
We'll do all the words.
We'll screw all you up.
I can't believe the love that we're feeling.
How we have to play.
How we better play.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Oh boy.
Well, we've got somebody here tonight that's going to tell us a lot of neat things.
Who is here?
It's Joe.
And who is Joe?
My dad's best friend.
And who else is Joe?
Who else is Joe?
Yeah.
What do you mean?
Well, does he have any children?
Oh yeah, he does.
And I get to play with her sometimes.
And what is her name?
Her name is Catherine.
And does he have a wife?
Yeah.
Does he have a dog?
Mm-hmm.
That's very important, huh?
Yeah.
Good people have to have a good dog, right?
Mm-hmm.
And what else?
Well, he's a carpenter, right?
Yeah, that's right.
That's very good.
And he's a builder?
Yes.
And he can build wood?
Yeah, he's a real craftsman.
Yeah, and he works the whole day?
But he sometimes, when it's lunchtime, he eats lunch, and then when it's dinnertime, he eats dinnertime.
Very good.
You want to welcome Joe to the hour of the time?
Welcome Joe to the hour of the time.
Thank you.
Joe's sitting over here petrified, folks.
He's so nervous.
He doesn't already know what to do.
We're going to talk tonight about a lot of things, but first, you know, I remember when John was on the show last, how we talked about my new .45.
Remember that?
Yeah.
You were with us when we went out and test fired it.
And I said that I had, with one shot, never having done it before, not thinking that I actually could, Took a bead on a rock at 115 yards and hit it just a couple inches below dead center.
You were there, weren't you?
Yeah, I witnessed the whole thing.
It was amazing.
And that really happened, didn't it?
Yes, it did.
Well, I got some letters that challenged that.
They didn't think it happened.
But you actually were there.
Yes, I saw it.
I saw it.
I didn't believe it myself.
Well, it amazed me, I got to tell you.
Joe, what are we going to talk about tonight?
We talked earlier about the housing industry in general, ways that people can get a good home.
I'm sorry folks, I'm not a radio personality.
I'm a carpenter by trade.
Anyway, we've been discussing about how things are built and being that a home is a major investment in a person's life.
Second to a car, or first to a car.
People look over a car pretty close.
They take it for a test drive.
They ask questions.
But it seems to me that... That terrible noise you just heard was Pooh trying to pull her little chair out of the studio, past the microphone that Joe is using, and scraping it all the way.
You gotta hold that cord off the mic stand there, otherwise it makes a hellacious noise too, I say.
Okay, I invited Joe on the broadcast, folks, because he's a real craftsman.
He's a carpenter of the old style.
He knows what he's doing.
And in the many conversations I've had with Joe, he has just blown my mind with what happens when homes are being built and shortcuts that are taken in order to save money and how fast they're cranking out houses.
And those kinds of things.
So what we're going to do is we're going to talk a little bit about what Joe knows about houses and what you should know.
And I can guarantee you most of you don't unless you're in the housing business.
And I mean the housing construction business right in there doing the construction.
You probably don't know much of what you're going to hear tonight.
As most first-time radio guests do, Joe will get over his nervousness and just move right in here, and everything will flow real well.
And then we'll take some calls, and you guys can ask Joe some questions, and you'll find out that he has a wealth of knowledge that's just absolutely tremendous.
Not only that, but he's a hell of a good shot.
He's a good friend.
When he goes to work, he goes to work, and he doesn't go to play.
And just one hell of a good guy.
We were talking.
Most people, when they go out looking for a home, they go to homes that have already been built.
Yeah, they'll go look at the models.
They'll have two or three floor plans and models set up with the furnishings in them.
And they'll be all fixed up with the landscaping and everything.
And these are usually homes for like tractors.
Uh, areas where they built a whole bunch of houses based upon three or four different floor plans and they just cranked these things out one right after another.
And they all look really nice, don't they?
Yeah, they have a kind of a Hollywood appearance.
What do you mean by Hollywood?
Well, they look nice on the outside, but on the inside it's really a different story.
Why don't we talk about that?
You know, some of the things that you told me that really floored me I think people out there need to hear.
You talked about going to work on these projects.
Why don't you just talk about that?
What happens when they're building these tract homes?
What do they do first?
Well, let's say, for example, the valley down in Phoenix.
It's hot and dry.
The cement workers don't want to work the cement too much, so they add a lot of water.
It's smooth and it's easy to work.
But you lose all your strength.
They pour it in the morning and that afternoon we're on the floor with tennis shoes so we don't leave marks and footprints, snapping lines and getting ready to play it out.
And then the following day we start the framing, the exterior frame.
And you're doing this before the foundation has even dried or even begun to cure?
Correct.
Your concrete will test out supposedly in 27 days, reach Minimum strength.
So really, nothing should be placed upon that concrete.
No building should be done on it for that period of time.
No.
Not really.
But, like, a lot of the big outfits down there, they build three, four hundred, six hundred units a year.
And it's a production line.
It's very similar to building a car.
So what you're saying is that pouring this concrete that's got way too much water in it because of the heat there especially, but they do this in other places.
And enables them to work with that concrete much quicker than they would if it were the proper consistency and didn't have all that water.
And then within two hours of pouring the concrete, they're actually laying out the rest of the structure on that concrete and they're beginning to build, what, walls?
Well, you lay out all your plates, all your interior partitions, and all the exterior walls.
That's correct.
top plate and bottom plate, and then the following day, you'll start framing.
And you'll actually start framing and stacking construction on top of this concrete that hasn't even begun to dry, much less cure, and it never will, because of this, reach anywhere near the strength that it's supposed to be and that the buyer actually believes that it is.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
That's correct.
If it's not covered for seven days, it'll lose about 50% of its strength.
And they don't cover it at all?
No.
No, you can't cover it because we're busy framing it.
Now what happens when you're framing your building and you're putting weight on concrete that has not dried and has not cured and is supposed to be actually the foundation for the building?
Does this mean that in places where there is heavy weight applied in Versus places where there's not heavy weight applied, you're going to get a sinking or an uneven foundation?
Yeah.
It can, depending a lot on the soil conditions, but it can disrupt the integrity of the structure, the entire structure.
And to me, being a carpenter, the basic The whole house is based on the foundation.
If you've got a good foundation, you'll have a pretty good house.
If you don't have a good foundation, it doesn't matter what you build on it.
So when somebody actually buys one of these tract homes that have been built like this in a hurry, and we're not just talking down in the valley, we're talking all across this country this is going on, because that's how they make money real quick and get a return on their investment is by building these houses really fast Saving as much on materials and work and labor as they can, and then selling it.
Yeah.
They really, they figure, their waste they figure is almost 30%.
That's a lot of waste.
And if they did it properly, they would have how much waste?
Oh, down around 10-15%.
Okay.
That would be acceptable.
But when people are buying these homes, they think that they're buying a beautiful home that was made properly, has a strong foundation, and the fact they're told all of this.
And the truth is that it's not at all.
No.
The contractor itself, and usually the home builders, the big builders, they're only on the hook for a year.
They guarantee it for a year.
They have to stand behind it.
After that, somebody else, that's why they'll give you a 5 year or 10 year warranty on the foundation or some kind of an extended warranty on certain items.
But after that, you're going to pay for this house for 30 years.
And well, I've known people who have bought these homes and they're so proud of it and they invite you over and you go in and you look.
And of course, you know, until I started talking to you, I didn't know all these things either.
And I don't think anybody does.
But everything was nice.
All the door jams fit and the walls were, you know, right and there was no cracks anywhere and everything worked.
And within just a matter of weeks, things started to go wrong.
All of a sudden doors didn't close right, cracks would appear in walls, and all kinds of things.
Floors weren't level anymore, and is this because of the quickie way that they're building these houses now, or is it because of shoddy workmanship, or bad planning, or what?
It's a combination of all those things.
You see the developers, why they're profit motivated.
But they don't build a house.
They subcontract.
They have a contractor who subs out portions of the work and usually the sub will sub out.
So, you've got a variety of people working on this project.
Some of them are skilled and some of them aren't.
So, it's kind of a luck of the draw.
If you get a good carpenter that builds you a pretty nice house, why you're lucky.
If you get a bad one, why you're not.
Same way with the heating or the mechanical or the C-network.
You gotta remember these guys aren't... They're working by piecework.
Time.
It's not... I get X amount of dollars for quality product.
I get X amount of dollars, period.
If it takes me a week or it takes me a month.
I get so much money and that's it.
So the incentive is not to... Not to hang around and do a good job.
The incentive is get it done and get paid.
And jump on to the next one.
And most of the workers don't make any of those decisions.
They're just told what to do by whoever they're working for.
They're told to hurry up.
Yeah.
We were slow and it took us about four days to frame a house.
Other crews are doing two and a half.
Wow.
And speaking of framing, I mean, there's a proper way to frame a house so that the house is strong, So that it has good integrity and so that when the new owners move in and they look in their little handy dandy book and it tells them that the framing is 16 inches apart and he goes to hang a picture and he measures out 16 inches and drives a nail through the drywall and there's nothing there.
Why is that?
There again you get back to the primary motivator is money.
And if you're only getting, say you're getting, some guys will do it for 80 cents a square foot and other guys will do it for $1.50 a square foot, regardless.
You've only got, the longer you take, the less money you make.
So everybody's kind of pushed into cutting corners and maybe one nail will hold it instead of three, you know, just to get by.
It really has nothing to do with quality.
So what are some of the ways that they cut corners and save money that ends up really cheating the home buyer?
Which is really the proper term for it.
They come in thinking that they have a home built to certain specifications and certain strength and standards and the truth is if they could just look through those walls they would see that it's not at all.
So why don't we talk about some of those things that people do to cut corners and save money but ends up costing the homeowner an awful lot down the line.
First thing, they try to get a good designer.
They can design a house, but yet still pass the local codes.
They'll try to stretch it.
They'll stretch that board as far as they can.
And then they buy the cheapest lumber they can get.
Instead of kiln-dried lumber, which has been dried in the kiln and then surfaced to dimension, they'll buy what they call S-Green, surface green.
It's still wet.
It's going to bow.
It's going to twist.
It's going to warp.
It's going to do all kinds of strange things.
And that's why all of a sudden doors won't close right and cracks appear in walls and ceilings and all that.
And all kinds of things.
What else do they do?
Green lumber is really bad, though.
Yes, it is.
But it's cheap.
It's cheaper than silk.
Silk is the preferred.
But no smart person would ever build a house out of green lumber.
Yeah, that's correct.
Well, you don't know what it's going to do.
It may be fine.
Like I say, it may twist and everything works good.
For the first year or so, but after everything's seasoned and drying out and cracking and twisting and foundations moving around, the floor's heaving, you're getting cracks in your ceilings, the doors don't work the way they used to.
It's just, it all boils down to money.
It all boils down to saving a dollar.
If they can save $100 per unit, if you build 600 units a year, why, that's quite a bit of money.
And they can use the cheapest roof they can get by with, they use the cheapest materials they can get by with.
Concrete, they water it down a little bit, stretch it a little bit.
It's just a combination of things.
So really, people should not be buying these homes.
It's really the truth of the matter.
I personally wouldn't.
Well, after what I've learned, I wouldn't either.
And after watching you work for quite some time, I mean, I've got a different feel and a different understanding of what carpentry is all about and the way things should be done and watching somebody do something that really knows how to do it is quite an experience versus watching a bunch of yahoos who are just in a hurry to make a buck and then go get a quick beer at the end of the day.
That's basically it.
Everybody's trying to make a dollar.
Everybody's trying to make a living.
But yet at the same time, there's this tremendous pressure to hurry.
A normal track home, they'll have it from the time they break ground, it'll take 28 days.
And it's done.
The people are moving in, they roll out the sod, and they're digging the pool on the 29th day.
And the paint's not even dry, the concrete's not even cured, the lumber's still green.
You can't.
There are certain things, as you get experience, you can pick up speed to a certain degree.
But then they've taken it to, it's almost ridiculous.
There's really no time to do anything right.
It's just, when can you get it done?
What are some of the other things that they do in the building trade to save money?
Well, they'll cut down on insulation.
They'll cut corners wherever they can.
They buy cheaper knobs.
They buy doors that don't have two hinges instead of three.
They'll cut corners any way they can.
Any way they can.
And then also they try to keep the price down on the subcontractors each year instead of getting better why the price goes a little cheaper this year.
We're building them pretty cheap.
Is it possible for someone to buy a lot and build their own house and have it financed and have it built better?
And cheaper than what these people are doing?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, you could.
The problem is that most people don't want to take their time.
It's pretty intensive.
It's time-consuming.
You've got to do your homework.
You've got to do your research.
You've got plan checks.
You've got architects to deal with.
You've got design problems and procurement of materials.
It's just an all-day job.
And for someone that didn't have the time, why, it wouldn't It wouldn't work out.
Is it possible for someone who doesn't have the time to contract that house to be built and still get it built the way that it should be instead of the way that most of them are?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, I would say instead of buying a track home or something, I'd buy something that may be a smaller outfit or a smaller company building a speculation home.
When they're building a speculation home, that means that they're putting the house together In the hopes that it will sell.
So they're going to take a little more time.
They're going to add a few more amenities.
A little better graded carpet.
A little better roof.
I think it's a better bargain.
The ideal thing would be for the person to design his own home and seek out somebody's qualified personnel.
Whether it be a mason or whether it be a carpenter or whether it be a roofer.
You know, people that have a reputation, that have a track record of doing quality work.
How would somebody know who does quality work?
I mean, they've all got licenses.
That doesn't mean anything.
That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get quality work.
Yeah.
How does someone find real craftsmen?
How does someone go out and find people like yourself who really do good work and who really do care and don't try to Cut those corners and cheat the buyer or the builder or whoever they happen to be working for.
How do you find those people?
Well, that's kind of a tough question.
It's like trying to find a good auto mechanic or a good doctor or a good lawyer.
More word of mouth, you have to do your homework.
You have to go around some of the better places and ask around who's good.
Ask the building inspectors.
Who the good guys are and who aren't.
Who does the quality work.
So you think the building inspectors will tell you the truth?
Yeah, they'll steer you to the right people.
I imagine in these smaller areas, I don't know what they do in the big city.
Well, you hear these stories and I've had people tell me to my face that they make these little payoffs all the time and they get all the work steered to them.
Well, that happens too.
Actually the bad name and bad reputation of contractors is the bad making it hard on the good guys.
We also know that people get involved in projects themselves.
Like somebody might want to divide a room in half.
You know, whatever they want to do.
And they're going to do it themselves.
And they go out and they buy the Reader's Digest book and all these kinds of things.
What's his name on this old house?
Who's that?
Bob Vila.
But there's somebody better than him.
There's a couple, a man and a woman, who have a show.
I forget the name of their show, and I forget their name, but they actually show you how to do all this stuff, and they do a pretty good job of it.
Have you ever watched their program?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It's interesting.
I think people could do it if you A little bit mechanically inclined.
You don't have to be an athlete or anything.
You've got to have proper tools.
That helps if you don't get in a big hurry and take your time and do your research.
There's a lot of things in the library.
You can get books on carpentry.
Now they've got videos out.
Hire an old guy.
Hire an old retired carpenter or something.
They can show you a few tricks.
But what are some tips for people who want to do that?
What kind of lumber to look for?
You showed me some things that I would never look for.
If I went down to buy some 2x4s, I'd tell the guy I wanted 22x4s, he'd probably load up the junkiest stuff he had in my trailer and I'd go rolling off thinking everything was okay.
But how do you know if you're getting good lumber, and if you're getting good lumber, how do you know if you've got the good pieces of that good lumber?
What are the things that people need to look for?
That's taking me years.
You see, there's a certain big grade lumber.
There's an industry standard, supposedly, Western wood products.
Yeah, you amaze me today.
You're picking up one piece of wood and another piece of wood, and you're showing me the difference between the two, and one of them is used for this, and another one's used for that, and one's no good, and the other one's got rounded corners, and the other one has square corners, and you've got to use it for this, this, and this, and I look at it, and it all looks the same to me.
So, fill us in here, Joe.
If you've got about 25 years, I guess you can figure out what sport to put where.
You have to work your material.
It's like anything, working leather, or working metal, or working any kind of a craft.
You get to learn your medium, your material, what goes where.
Anything structural, I would recommend you use Douglas fir, as the residents would.
If you're into lighter stuff, little partitions, you can use hemp fir, or Or pine studs.
Depends on geographically where you're located.
Why would you recommend Douglas Fir for building?
It's the strongest, it's resinous, it's the best.
Structurally it's the strongest.
When you're looking at wood you showed me some things they like for training.
To make sure that all the corners are there on the wood and that they're But they're not rounded off and because you're going to be building walls, you want them to be square and true and all that kind of stuff.
And if you don't have straight two-by-fours to build the framing that have really good corners on them, then your wall is going to reflect that.
Yeah, you'll have a crooked house.
Yeah, a crooked house.
Say that word, you'll have a crooked house.
Crooked little man with a crooked little house.
That's right.
Who paid the crooked little carpenter who built the crooked little house?
But over, over the years, uh, I've seen it deteriorate, the lumber materials, uh, from the old, they've gone from, uh, I don't know where it's going or where, whether we're running out of timber, which I doubt, but, uh, each year the grade gets a little worse.
Uh, they allow more knots at the same grade as, as before.
Uh, there is just, and it costs more.
I can't figure it out.
I don't know what's going on.
But I have to work with it.
Well, you know, that's happening all across the board with all different kinds of materials.
Not just lumber, but with everything.
And with food, too.
The same thing with food.
Remember when you used to go to the grocery store and get prime beef?
Yeah.
Well, you can't get prime beef now.
And remember what used to be labeled as good is now choice.
And the one that was below good is now good.
And, you know, this is happening everywhere.
And it's happening with everything.
And I don't really know why, either, but I know that it certainly is.
There were some other things that you wanted to talk about tonight and share with our listening audience, but while you're thinking about that, we're going to take a break.
Don't go away, folks.
We'll be right back.
And, you know, you should be listening to this broadcast if you're thinking about buying a home or if you have a home.
Already and you really don't know what kind of construction went into it.
We come back and we're going to talk about some things.
We're going to talk about how you can tell...
Joe, some questions if you want, because you're probably out there thinking of questions that I never think of in a hundred years.
Thank you.
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Wouldn't it be nice if you just walk out your door and open up this thing in the ground and jump down in there with those little dwarfs and come up with a big wheelbarrow full of diamonds?
I know I'd like to do that.
Just because, for one thing, it'd be a lot of fun.
Number two, you'd You'd be able to do some things you couldn't do before because you didn't have the diamonds to do it with.
Those things are quite beautiful to look at.
But we can't do that, folks.
We have to go out and make a living.
And we have to do it in the best way that we can.
Each of us according to his knowledge and talents.
Isn't it strange?
That the more we do that and the more we work and the harder we toil to get something for ourselves and for our family, all of a sudden something happens and it just sort of sifts through your fingers and kind of disappears.
You just don't seem to be making as much as you used to make.
The truth is you're making the same amount of money, in most cases more.
But you can't buy as much with it.
Because it's always, continually, and forever losing its value, which means the price of everything goes up.
Some of you can even remember when only one person in the family had to work to support the whole family.
Pretty well.
Pretty well, by golly.
And now you can't do that anymore.
Well, folks, if you want to protect at least a portion of your assets from that constant nibbling and dwindling and disappearing into thin air, you need to get your hands on some real money.
Gold and silver coin, or bullion, or platinum, or any of these precious metals that don't ever lose their value.
Traditionally it's been gold and silver that has been the mark, the measure by which all economies and all markets have been measured.
And that is true even today, ladies and gentlemen.
If you don't believe me, turn on your television and wait for the financial report and you'll see that the big news of the day is the price of gold and silver every single day.
And the close is also important.
So you need to call Swiss America Trading and talk to Frank, talk to any of the good people there, get your hands on some real money.
Real money.
You'll be amazed.
You'll be amazed.
When you get your hands on a silver dollar or a gold coin in any denomination, I don't care, I like to say $20 gold piece.
Hold the $20 bill in your left hand and the $20 gold piece in your right.
Tell me which one has worth.
Oh, that's quick.
Boy, realization comes to people's eyes so fast when you perform that little simple test.
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1-800-289-2646.
Do it now, ladies and gentlemen.
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You will be amazed at how good you feel when you have some of this stuff stashed away, and you know that if everything comes tumbling down around your ears, everybody else will be running around trying to spend their paper money, and they won't be able to do it.
You'll be okay.
1-800-289-2646.
Don't go away.
Be right back with Joe Carpenter.
Just with the one you want Until you forget me and carry me up the place So I'm a very thing.
It won't be long when there's a storm.
Don't you just remember?
I'll get you three caroons, and write them as a book.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Welcome back, Joe.
The whistling in that song was courtesy of who?
Well, Joe, let's talk a little bit about, and then we'll take some calls.
How does someone know if they've got some problems with their house that can be corrected either by them or by somebody who knows what to do and add a lot of strength and Years to their house and probably some value while they're at it without, you know, tearing the whole place apart and rebuilding it from the ground up.
What can they do?
Well, I would suggest that the first thing is don't buy a bad house.
Well, of course, but it's like you can get a lemon in a car and you can get a lemon in a house.
Only the house is going to be a lot more expensive than the car and a lot harder to sell.
If it's obviously a limit.
But people need to do, for this kind of investment, people need to be more educated and they need to do their homework.
They need to find out whether the outfitter they're buying, the company that they're buying their home from has got a good track record.
Go ask somebody that lives in one of their houses.
Walk up to the door, knock on the door, and say, how do you like this?
Do you like the home?
Do you have any problems with it?
You hear stories of people being in the house like a year, and all of a sudden there's big cracks in the roof, and cracks in the corners of the walls.
Like you said, the doors stick, and things don't work as well as they used to.
That's because that green wood is drying out.
It's all warping and going crazy.
Not only that, it warps and goes crazy much worse than it would because the framing isn't done properly.
Instead of putting framing at 16 inches apart, they go to like 2 feet.
Does anybody go more than 2 feet?
That's not allowed.
They'll go as wide as two feet, and instead of putting two or three nails wherever they are needed, they may only put one.
And, of course, there's no structural integrity there.
Take, for example, a typical... By the way, folks, I learned all this from Joe today.
I don't know anything about it.
Take just your basic track home, what we call Kirkham track.
Anyway...
You've got a two by four wall.
Inside you have a half inch of drywall, gypsum board.
Outside you have a half inch of rigid styrofoam and a half inch of stucco.
And that's it.
That's your wall.
What about insulation?
Well, yeah, you have R11 insulation.
Three and a half inches of insulation.
But that doesn't do anything structurally for And that's it.
You've really got drywall in the home and covered with hopefully a half inch of stucco.
Wow.
Now that's incredible.
That really is incredible.
We should call them the hollow houses we could knock on.
I do know a little bit about how houses used to be built back in the days when people took pride and understood that a home was supposed to last for an awful long time.
And that's why you have framed homes These old Victorian homes still standing today that were built well over a hundred years ago in the Midwest, like what we used to call the, not the brownstones, but they were the greystones.
They had the big porch, the big massive porch, and they were beautiful homes with built-ins.
And that was an era that's gone.
Before the Second World War, my homes were pretty well built by individuals that knew what they were doing.
They were craftsmen.
They weren't in a hurry.
It might take them a year to build a house.
But after the war, a guy by the name of, I don't remember his first name, his name was Levin.
He got the idea that he could build homes like people build cars.
You'd have a framing crew come in, and you'd have a sheeting crew come in.
Everybody's specialized.
Everybody's doing their piece work.
And it was like an assembly line.
They could save money, but yet you didn't get the quality.
You didn't get that craftsmanship because it was, well, let's say after the war, all the soldiers came home and they got married and they had kids and there weren't any places to rent.
There was a housing shortage.
Yeah.
So it's taken off from there to what it is today.
Like I say, they crank a house out in 28 days, and I'm sure that there's outfits a little quicker than that.
Yeah.
Well, back in the old days, they used to buy all the materials that was going to go into a house.
that we're going to go into our house.
They would dig the foundation.
They would lay the foundation either with stone or with concrete or however they were going to do it.
And then they would let it cure and set and reach its maximum strength.
And then they would pile all of the lumber and the window frames and everything that they had, the trusses, everything.
on top of that foundation, after it had cured and reached its maximum strength, and they would cover it and let it sit for an entire year.
And that was so that if the foundation was going to shift or settle, it would do so because it would have the weight of all the material, even the nails, they would pile on top of this foundation.
And after that year was over, they would take all the stuff off, and they would re-measure and take the level of the foundation, and if there was anything wrong, if it had settled, then they would fix it right then, and then and only then would they build the house.
And so they had some tremendously solid and sound foundations and And they built really good homes and that lumber had sat there and cured for a whole year and dried right there on the spot where it was going to become a home so it adapted and acclimated to the weather.
And all of that stuff.
And they don't do any of that now.
No.
You'd have to do that yourself.
You'd have to be an owner builder or hire someone special to do that for you.
Like I say, nowadays they're cranking them out in 28 days.
You want to take some calls?
Yeah, let's take some calls.
Okay folks, number is 520-333-4578.
520-333-4578.
If you'd like to call and ask Joe a question about carpentry or homes or, you know, something about your house, how to fix it if you have a problem or any of those kinds of things while he's here, take advantage of it because he has a tremendous how to fix it if you have a problem or any of those I
I don't know anything about it, and so probably I'm not asking the right questions tonight, and Joe being as his first time on radio is a little bit petrified over here.
You gotta see, his ears are glowing redder than Rudolph's nose, and I'm not trying to embarrass him, but get a little humor into this.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hi Bill, hi Joe, this is Grace from Wisconsin.
Hey Joe, I don't know if you can hear me, I can't hear you through here.
I've got a house here and I'm wondering what type of insulation board to put on the exterior I added to an existing three and a half inch wall because it's cold up here in Wisconsin, obviously, and they're recommending our board one inch with the R rating of eight.
Is that going to pay off in the future for such a minimal amount of insulation?
You're talking about a rigid like a polystyrene?
That's correct.
Yes.
They recommended against the, incidentally, the aluminum foil there.
Because they said sometimes.
It has an aluminum backing front and back.
Yeah, they recommend against that with the vinyl siding, though.
They said it interacts with the siding.
So they're going just with the plain, what they call higher board, without the metal foil.
What would you recommend, Joe?
Well, now you're going to have existing siding and you're going to put the R-board, as they call it, over that and then you're going to go vinyl siding over the R-board.
Yeah, they're going to pull the masonite siding off and then they're going to put the R-board on, put the masonite siding on flush to add a backing for the vinyl so it looks smooth.
Yeah.
And we're wondering, I'm wondering if that's, you know, worth the effort for only an R-factor of 8.
Well, I tell you, I think you'll get a little more than that out of it.
Plus, being where you're at, it's cold and it gets cold here.
I did the same, similar thing to my house.
My pipes used to freeze inside the walls.
It's an older house.
Uh-huh.
And I put some of that stuff on there and it quit doing that altogether.
It made it much more comfortable.
It makes it quieter.
It gives you some sound attenuation.
It also gives you insulation and vapor barrier.
It's pretty hard to beat that stuff as an after product.
So you think that the one inch would, even though it's a lower value, would probably give you a little bit better long term or after the installation then?
Well, you've got a three and a half inch wall now, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so that's just more between you and the weather.
One person said get this two and a half inch stuff and for $25 a sheet, but it'd take you almost 25 years to pay for it.
Yeah, that's right.
I don't think I'd go any thicker than one inch because you get into the real thick two and a half inch, two inch wire, it's hard to fasten it and it's hard to fasten anything, excuse me, on top of that.
Yeah.
Your nails are getting extremely long.
Well, okay.
I won't keep you, fellas.
Thank you, Joe.
And Bill, I just picked you up here.
I'm starting in on the shortwave stuff.
And I think out of all of them, you're the one.
And I appreciate what you're putting out there.
And what I would suggest, I'd like to order some stuff.
And I'm sure some of the people would like to order some of your material there.
But we don't have too much Well, that's because this broadcast isn't an ad, it's not a salesman show.
I'm not trying to sell you anything.
But you're good and you've got good ideas and you sound what you say and the literature that you would support from what you write or contribute via your broadcast would be, you know, everybody would, a lot of people I'm sure would enjoy It's not just that that board is is of less value because it's cumulative.
myself would like to see what you have available.
Just see for thought.
Well, maybe we'll talk about some of that stuff tomorrow.
Yeah, okay, well thank you for your time, fellas.
Thank you.
And it's not just that the board is of less value, because it's cumulative.
He's adding it over three and a half inches of insulation already, which means that Go ahead.
instead of going down like he obviously thought, he's actually increasing the R rating.
Oh, yeah.
He's increasing his resistance to heat transfer.
That's what you're after.
And I think what he's talking about is going to be money well spent in the long run.
Okay.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah, good evening.
This is Lynn in North Carolina.
I've got a question for Joe.
Uh-huh.
Go ahead.
It just had a cement pad poured about 27 to be made into a carport maybe later on and closed into a garage.
And it's at least five or six inches thick at the, uh, at the minimum.
I'm getting a hairline crack.
It's about 30 days old now.
Getting a hairline crack starting, uh, across the width of this cement pad.
It's a real, real fine crack.
It doesn't go all the way from side to side.
It stops about halfway.
Well, I'll tell you what the three things that concrete's guaranteed to do.
And it's guaranteed to get hard, turn white, and crack.
And that's the way it sounds.
As long as it saves a small crack, a hairline crack.
See, it's got, it has to move.
It has to crack.
It has to crack somewhere.
It has to relieve the tension.
And the bigger the slab, I do know a little bit about concrete.
The bigger slab that's poured, the more it's going to crack because it doesn't have anything to work against except itself.
That's why you have sidewalks poured in small squares with that expanding material that used to be tar, I don't know what they use today, between the cracks so that as the concrete expanded, this tar would give way.
And sometimes you would even see those crack, but they're not as prone to crack as the larger swabs.
Now, did you, did they put expansion joints, strikeout expansion joints in there?
I had the driveway done, too.
It's about $5,000 worth of work on it.
Well, it was done in two different stages.
They poured the head for the pipes first, and then they cured out about two weeks before parking any vehicles on it.
Yeah, I wouldn't wait a little.
You should cover it.
They had about two weeks of curing time before I ever got to park anything on it.
They said you could drive on your driveway after three days.
How many days?
Yeah, after three days.
No.
I get that.
Yeah, I wouldn't wait a little.
You should cover it.
They should have covered it for seven days, kept it moist.
Well, down here in the south, they don't cover anything.
I've watched a lot of places before.
Yeah, well, see, you'll lose 50% of your strength by not covering it.
But if it rains and it's still wet, they'll cover it or something like that.
But concrete continues to get hard.
50 years from now, it's continuing to get hard.
It's not just water drying in this goo that you poured.
There's a chemical reaction that takes place.
They put, as far as expansion joints, they put metal expansion joints out in the driveway part, but the slab is just a big square like you were talking about, a rectangle.
There's no expansion joints in it at all that I know of.
Normally what they'll do, at 12 feet or 15 foot intervals, they'll strike a joint, not all the way through, just make a groove, and that allows a place for it to crack.
It's under stress.
Alright.
And as long as it stays a small hairline crack, I don't think you're going to have any problem.
Did you have any wire mesh or reinforcement in the contract?
There's no rig bar or anything in it.
As a matter of fact, I hadn't even called him.
It just happened a couple days ago that I noticed it.
And you know, it's better to get your fingernail in it.
And I thought I'd give him a call and see what his opinion was on it.
Yeah.
Well, if it gets any bigger, I'd say you'd have some recourse.
But if it's just a small crack, you're going to see that in any kind of concrete work you do.
Sooner or later, somewhere, it's going to crack.
Just normal.
OK.
Well, have me worried.
I appreciate that.
Will you see one, Joe, that goes all the way across the whole slab?
I mean, that's what he's talking about.
Even if it's a hairline crack, I mean, that's a pretty big crack.
Yeah.
It's an indication that it's relieving stress.
Can it be sealed?
I guess it could.
I mean, it's not necessarily cracked all the way through, I don't think.
This has been whirly-birdied and, you know, slicked on the top.
Okay, they might have... That's what I'm seeing cracked, is that very thin layer on the top.
Well, a lot of times, sometimes if you work-feed that too much, If you finish it, work it too much.
You draw up too much of the fines.
You draw up too much of the cement out there and you get like what they call eggshell cracks.
You get little... That's what it looks like.
Yeah, like little eggshell cracks.
I wouldn't worry about that.
That's just a surface thing.
Yeah, this is just in a pretty much a straight line.
Okay, well I appreciate the information and I want to tell Bill, every listener of this show, I've been listening to you Bill.
Probably about three years now.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you.
All right.
Bye-bye.
And thank you for your call.
520-333-4578 is the number.
Yeah, I thought he was talking about a crack through the main slab, but he was talking about that small layer that they put over the top to finish it out and make it look nice and smooth and beautiful.
No, that's... I got that on my back.
That's nothing.
Good evening.
You're on the air.
Yeah.
Hello.
Yeah, Joe, it's a good program.
Listen, I live outside of Dallas, Texas, and I was in construction for well over 20 years.
I agree with everything you say.
I've seen it all.
Literally.
And you said the right thing about people checking around, finding the right people.
And another thing is if you're having a house built, or you've picked one out, go out there every day as often as you can.
Look at the concrete.
Look at the framing.
Look at the wood.
Make sure it's being done right.
And really look at it because I've seen the quality around here just go down the tube.
You know, that reminds me of something.
If you go and you pick out a lot and you've already bought the house before they build it, you have the right then, if you've already paid for it, you have the right to go to that construction site and supervise the building of that house.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And, you know, we used to like, man, I mean, you know.
Some of these guys would come out and they'd bring you pizza and drinks and stuff.
Smart people.
Yeah, and there's a lot of folks around here.
There's a lot of sloppy stuff I see around here.
Siding and interior just comes apart real quick.
Yeah, it's incredible.
Most people don't know what to look for.
They just do a little research and spend a little time.
But they're spending a lot of money over a lot of years.
And it pays off to spend a little time and catch it right from the start.
Especially with that concrete.
Oh, Lord.
It gets real hot here.
And they pour the concrete.
They never covered it.
And every now and then you'd see some guys walk around like on a sidewalk or something, and they'd be spraying kerosene or something on it.
Kind of a semi-cover, kind of try to seal it.
Or they'd use kind of a paraffin-based sealant on the concrete.
I used to snap lines a lot.
I did that for years.
We'd snap lines on these big jobs.
And we'd get on it right after they poured it while it was still sort of wet.
And then they'd just start dumping the material on it and go right after it the next day.
And they'd shorten the concrete a little bit too so the bottom plate didn't necessarily sit all the way on the wall either.
It'd be leaning over.
Yeah, they'd cut a little bit of concrete here and there, a quarter inch, half inch here and there.
That added up too.
Oh yeah.
Are you guys trying to tell me that a lot of these people who bought $200,000 homes really only have $25,000 homes?
Sure!
Absolutely!
I mean, this is true real quick, and you'd see these real nice homes that have a cheap masonite siding on it, you know, and here in Texas, I mean, man, it's blazing hot, and it'd get wet, and they use this yellow pine, yellow pine studs for framing.
Man, it'd rain and the sun would come out and get that stuff and it'd look like spaghetti.
Yes, well... They keep right on using it, man.
And, uh, I did a lot of punch out on that stuff.
We'd go in, straighten the studs out in the wall, and, uh, my goodness, you could go in there after they had already sheet rocked and textured it, painted it.
Oh, it looked awful.
But then I had the eye to catch it.
I could see that.
I was, boy, this looks awful.
And these people were going in there in these, uh, in these, um, developments in these areas where they were building these nice homes and man they really thought they were they were living good you know they were better than everybody else they were new part of town where all the rich folks lived but well i'll tell you what within a year that siding could start warping and the trim face part started dumping loose and oh it just really looks shabby
you know i i hate to do this but i gotta cut this off because we're out of time oh i'm sorry that's a don't be sorry i'm I wish I could let you talk some more.
The reason I did this broadcast tonight is because the biggest investment anybody ever makes is their home.
And not only that, their home is a great part of the American dream.
And I hate it.
I can't stand it that people are being cheated and taken on these homes like they are today.
It is horrible.
But anyway, we're out of time, so I want to thank you for your call, and Joe, I want to thank you for being our guest, and we're going to have you back, and next time, we're just going to take calls, because, you know, just like I said a while ago, these people, they know what to ask.
Because they're having the problems and I think that's what we need to do.
So maybe you can come back next week and we'll just have a program where we can take calls and let the callers talk to you and ask their questions and I can answer and we can make comments or you know whatever we need to do.
So thank you.
Thank you.
And good night folks.
God bless each and every single one of you.
Peace.
Oh, thank you.
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