Happy New Year!

This is episode number 228 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett. Here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad that you could join us for another live episode here in the studio. How you doing, Kev?

Man, I'm, I'm happy to be here, dude. You're welcome. How long has it been since we've actually been in the studio doing a show together?

It's been a whole year.

It's been— it's the first time all year that we have done this. I mean, it has been a long time.

So, uh, happy New Year, y'all.

That's right. Happy Happy New Year.

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I don't.

Yeah, me either. We're going to be here for each and every one of them.

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How you doing, man?

doing really good.

Yeah?

Yeah, I, uh, I, I ended the year with tag soup.

Um, I, I don't know what that is.

I shot nothing this year. That's not true. I, I'm— I'll circle back around to that. I, I harvested nothing.

Okay.

This year on my many hunts. Well, okay, that's not true either. I went dove hunting. I got a lot of dove this year.

You did.

I went deer hunting quite a bit this season and got nothing. Yeah, I could have gotten something if I was a, um, less than ethical person.

Oh, um, but you're not.

But I'm not, so I didn't.

Well, so good for you. Yeah, I guess.

Yeah, I— well, I ended up on some, some better places to hunt. I think I'll, I'll have some success there next year. I did shoot a coyote though.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, and it was I never found him. And the reason I don't think I found him is I think the rest of his buddies ate him.

Oh, all right. Like, by the time you found him, well, he was already gone.

It was, it was right at sundown in this— and for people that don't know, I mean, like, coyotes are terrible for deer property. They're— I mean, like, they'll, they'll kill other people's dogs, they'll kill people's chickens. Like, it's really good to kind of get them out of the way if you can. Um, but this coyote came. I was sitting in a blind and he, uh, he came sniffing around the feeder that I was sitting by. And I was like, this guy— and like, that was my first day there. I was like, this joker is going to chase off every deer that's even close to me. So I mean, like, and I know the guy that owns the property, he want me to get rid of it. So just— so I, I dispatched with the coyote.

So I— as soon as I, I got him, I heard yelping and hollering and then nothing. And it was about 15 minutes later because I— at that point, I mean, it was sundown anyway, so legal shooting hours were over.

Yeah.

So I came down out of the stand. I was like, I'm gonna go back to my truck. I'm gonna get my pistol and my flashlight. You know, because I don't— if he's wounded, I don't want him to like jump on me, right? Anything like— but I want to make sure that he's— I want to make sure he's dead.

Sure.

I want him to suffer. Um, so I started hunting around for him where I, where I shot him, and this was about 15 minutes after the initial shot. And about a quarter mile away, all of a sudden I hear a bunch of coyotes ripping into something, and I'm like, okay, yeah. Sorry, dude.

Literally dog eat dog.

It was, yeah. So, but had, had a fun time hunting.

Sure.

Um, looking forward to next season.

Mhm.

Um, but yeah, that was, that was it. I slept in my truck. Oh, out on this guy's property. Okay, I won't do that again.

No, that sounds horrible.

The— I mean, like, the only reason I did is because it was supposed to get down like 37 degrees.

Oh, that's cold.

Like, usually I would just like either sleep on the ground in my, in my bag something, but I was like, man, that's too cold.

Yeah, it's— so I mean, we, we had a super cold spell here. Oh yeah, just like a week and a half ago.

It's like 17 degrees.

Yeah, well, yeah, it was like— and, and the feels like was, was like down in the low teens and all that kind of stuff, right? So for— but for around here in Houston, like, that's, that's really, really cold. Uh, did y'all have any issues?

No, none.

So we—

so this is the first freeze in your new place?

Yeah, yeah, it's the first freeze in my new place, so I was trying to figure everything out and the The good thing is I was able to turn off the water to the, the entire back of the property, which when we bought the property, there was, there was, uh, some busted pipes that we knew were there. We didn't know where they were. We just knew that they were busted. Got those fixed. Um, but I literally just turned off all the water.

Mm-hmm.

And I opened up all the valves and, uh, drained them, all that kind of stuff. So I was like, man, we're good. I'm really excited. You know, I'm not gonna have to worry about this. I went to go turn it back on like 2 or 3 days after the, the weather had gotten back up to like, you know, 50, 60, make sure that, you know, had plenty of time to thaw out and everything, um, if anything was there. And I turned it on and, um, was checking around, everything looked good. And then I hear running water and I'm like, this is not good. Like, I should not be hearing running water, right? So I immediately go turn it back off and it was dark and I was like, I don't have

time to like really figure this out today. Um, so a few days later I got into it. I had to take like the corner off of my barn and, and off also like a panel, one of, one of the metal panels. And it was an elbow joint that had busted out the elbow.

Oh, it just like separated?

Yeah. And well, no, no, like exploded out the side. Like it was, it was busted busted.

Okay.

Like a hole in it, which, you know, the elbow joints are one of the most strong points because they're They're thicker PVC right there.

Sure.

Um, but I, I think it just— that joint went down just a little bit and probably didn't drain well. It was an easy fix. But anyway, thankfully I actually had an extra elbow joint. I was shocked that I had the parts to fix it. So it was— once I found it, it was a, you know, 5-minute job.

That's impressive in and of itself. I know, just to have the parts.

What, what are the chances that I would have the parts for that? So it was an easy fix, but other than that, we were good. Um, but I, I— it's supposed to, supposed to get cold, uh, towards the end of this week. But, um, but yeah, it's, it's been a crazy, it's a crazy busy holiday season for me, and I think it has been for you as well. Uh, we've had a lot of people over and a lot of stuff going on.

Oh yeah.

And I've just, I've just been trying to, you know, take, take the time that I have to fix things up around the house. I mean, it's been, it's been crazy the amount of things that just need to be done around my house and Yep. Anytime you buy land, it doesn't matter. Like, there's always going to be something to do. Always.

Yeah. I mean, well, so when, when I knew that the freeze was coming, I had a lot of work to get done. I mean, one, because it was— we just had a lot of stuff going on.

Yeah.

And so I— every year when it freezes like this, I say like every year like it's a normal occurrence. It seems to be recently.

Yeah.

Um, but So one of the issues that we always run into is our pool equipment.

Yeah.

And so this year I had, I had like one afternoon to do any prep work for winterization around the property. That's not long. I got home at like 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon, which I realize is early for most people, but like, dude, it gets dark. That's not enough time to like do a lot of stuff.

Like 3 hours, it's gonna be dark at that point. Yeah.

Yeah, so I, I was, I was just done with the whole, this is how we do pool equipment prep around the property. So I was like, because usually what we do is we'll put like a heat lamp in there and we'll hang some tarps around it because it's got like a little overhang roof on it. And I was like, you know what, it's going to take me— it would take me just as long just to build 2 walls around this thing and just cover it up. So that's what I did.

Cool.

And it doesn't look pretty.

Who cares? But I mean, it's behind your—

nobody sees that really. I am going to go back and make it look nice.

Sure.

But like, it was like plywood and, you know, but anyway, it was, it was a job. It was a job. Um, and so that, that's how I spent most of the afternoon. And then I was just walking around with lights the rest of the night, just making sure everything was covered up, made sure all the, you know, the delicate plants were inside and You know, the dogs had a good place, that the heaters were all working in the horse stalls, um, all that kind of stuff. Because I mean, that was the night it was going to get down to like— I think the initial night it was going to get down into like the high 20s, right? And then the next night it was getting down to, uh,

whatever, whatever it is. Yeah, low, the teens.

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, we were, we were— I mean, how'd your horses do?

Oh, they were great.

I mean, you had, you had them, you know, you had a good spot for them.

Well, so yeah, we, we've done some different things. Like, one, they're all covered up now. I didn't have time to build the wall on the third stall, so he was a little exposed. But every— all 3 stalls have heaters, like their own independent heaters, and then they all had blankets on. Like, they were fine.

Yeah, so yeah, we had, we had the dogs, um, we had them in, um, we let them out from, from a little while, and then we'd put them back in, then we'd let them out, we'd put them back in. Yeah, um, when I say in, like in the garage. We had, we had the heater going in the garage too. We had a rabbit in the garage. Oh, that's right, you have a rabbit now. Yeah, so we had to, we had to deal with the rabbit. Um, but I mean, all in all, everything was good.

Nice. So anyway, well, so what we just want— we just wanted to wish everybody a Happy New Year. We're excited about another season know what we call it, season, but like, it's another year.

I mean, we've been doing this a while now.

A little bit.

I mean, we— and we had last year, we had some fairly memorable moments, and we hit episode number 200.

That was a big one.

That was a huge one. I mean, goodness gracious, how many people do we know who like, they, they, they're like, ah, podcast, we're gonna do a podcast, and they get like 5 episodes, 3 to 5 in, and then they're like, nuts to this, right?

Done with this.

Yeah. And you You know, so I mean, thank you guys, first of all, for sticking with us for that many episodes.

Yeah, we probably wouldn't, like, keep doing it if we knew that nobody was listening.

I wouldn't. That'd be like the definition of insanity, right?

Still over here talking to nobody.

That's right. So yeah, that's a pretty big moment.

Yeah.

Do you have any that you would mention?

Well, we were talking before the show, like, we did more live shows this year than we've ever done. Unfortunately, you didn't get to do the one. We had a bunch towards the end of this year. And so one, we had Cowboy Jack on.

That was big.

But then he came and did the live show with me this last time.

That was cool.

Which was a lot of fun. Yeah. And it looks like that one, that may end up being a live show that we do fairly regularly. I think it's going to be like once every other month.

Okay. That we're doing.

It's like a big networking thing for contractors and professionals.

Yeah.

So we got to meet some cool people and there's been some cool connections that we've already made because of that event. I mean, and just one, just like people that we know who are in business, like, hey, I need somebody like this. And it's like, oh, I just talked to somebody like that. That kind of stuff happens for us all the time. Those were all memorable ones. I, you know, the one that we did at Sawyer Park for, for Freddie, that was a fun one. We met some really cool people at that one.

We've done that twice now.

I think so.

Yeah.

Um, so that, that one's a good— I don't know if he's done those recently or not. Um, if you haven't, Freddie, those are fun.

Yeah, let's do it again. Yeah.

Um, some other ones.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you, for me, like, one of the things that's really cool, and actually we're gonna be doing an episode on this, uh, really soon because You know, I've just been, I've been crazy busy, and so I haven't had a chance to install some stuff. But I recently installed, um, some Lutron stuff that was sent to us by Lutron.

Oh yeah.

And, um, I mean, that, that's pretty cool. I mean, we, we're, we're starting to get some people, and we review stuff all the time, obviously. I mean, you know, that's, that's something we do. But, but most of it's because we buy new things or someone gives us something, and we, you know, we're gonna do a review on it for, for those of you out there that That care. That care. Yeah, exactly.

Or interested. I mean, like, man, that happens all the time. It's like, hey, I bought that thing you were talking about.

Yeah, it does.

And it's like, really?

Yeah, I know. I guess it works. So, um, but, but Lutron sent us like a slew of things, and, um, I, I installed a bunch of it, uh, over the weekend. And so we're gonna be doing an episode on that. But I mean, it's pretty cool.

The only thing they didn't send us was like a kitchen sink. I mean, there's some stuff I like, I don't even know what to do with it.

I know.

We're, we're gonna— I mean, I'm sure it works for like some people, and so I just don't have a place to like install some of this stuff. Yeah. Um, it's cool, it's cool stuff.

Yeah.

Um, it's, it's sitting over there. Yeah, I see it. I'm looking at it right now. Looking at me.

Yeah. Well, one of those pieces I'm going, okay, Craig, I'm gonna ask you if you really want that. If not, I'm taking it home with me. Uh, but, um, but we're gonna be, we're gonna be doing some more, some more of that kind of stuff. But, um, yeah, we, it was a good year. 2023 was Was— I mean, 2022 was great. 2023, it's gonna be even better.

Yeah. I'll tell you what the funny thing with the smart lights, like, I don't think my kids and my wife really understand, like, how they— like, the concept of them.

What to do with them?

Well, like, or like what they can do. Like, and I think all of them were sort of convinced that the upstairs was haunted for a while because I have them set on timers.

Okay.

Like, I have schedules on them where if they get left on, they just get turned off.

Sure.

And my wife was telling me, she goes, hey, is there— there's something weird upstairs. And I was like, what? And she's like, I was, I was sitting upstairs just watching TV, and all of a sudden all the lights just turned off.

Were you like, oh yeah, because it was time for bed?

Yeah, you were up too late.

That's right.

It's like the one time in your life you're up too late.

It's time to go to bed.

Yeah, right. So that's what I was always trying to tell you, right? That's funny. I was like, no, babe, they're on a, they're on a timer.

Yeah.

She's like, oh, good.

Well, yeah, well, I mentioned to you that, uh, so the Ecobee Switch that, that we did early, early, about a year ago. Yeah, early in the year we did an episode on the Ecobee Switch, um, and I just recently installed that and I'm really excited because of where I put it. Um, we, we've got these corner lights on our house that, that shine just out the corners, which it's so dark when you live out like we do. I mean, it's dark, dark, dark. And so, um, I'm, I'm putting it on a schedule too. That's one of the cool things about the smart stuff is you can just really schedule them and those sorts of things, which I, I know it's probably like a luxury to have that kind of stuff. Sure, I realize that.

But at the same time, I'm— I love it.

Yeah, no, I love it. Most luxuries are like that. You don't like really appreciate them until you have them, right? And then it's like, why didn't I pay for this a long time ago? Yeah. Like, this is totally worth the money.

Yeah, exactly. So, well, my wife, like, one of the ones I installed, uh, she turned the light off and she was like, are the lights supposed to just like dim down before they go out? I'm like, yeah, that's what they did before because we had one of those sliders. I was like, you just did it faster. You pushed it down.

That's right.

No, it's the same. We got a good laugh out of that.

The computer is just not a maniac.

That's right, that's right. And I, and I can turn it off and you're gonna stay off. That's right, that's right.

Well, like, some of, some of those sliders, um, you know, they can go so low if you have the right bulb in them that, like, it'll turn the light off but it's still running power. Yeah, if you don't get that click.

I know, and the— we have the click ones, and, like, We have some bulbs that you just turns it down, it's just like this weird orange glow, and you don't even notice it until you look up and you're like, those stupid things are still on.

Yep, yep.

And it's like running power. And, and, you know, we, we've talked about this on the show before, but like, it's the same amount— it's the same amount of electricity that goes through it whether it's at full power or half or like 1% power. It's the same amount of electricity that you're running. So like Click it down.

Yeah, just click it.

That's right.

Or buy a smart one, it'll just do it for you.

There you go.

No click necessary.

That's right. Which, uh, it's actually one of the things that we're gonna, we're gonna do a review on, on the Lutron stuff. They've got one called the, uh, Diva. It's really cool. Okay, it remembers where it was, and like you can, you can set it to, to come on to a certain power.

Okay.

And, or like dimness or brightness or whatever.

Well, so like any of them that have that, uh, Pico remote should have like a little ball button in the middle.

Yeah.

Which is a memory button, right, that you can— and you can adjust that all the time. But like if you just— if you walk in a room and you just hit that, that little button in the middle, it should go back.

Okay.

To where— I mean, like it's not, it's not where it was before, right? It's just a preset memory to wherever it is that you want. Most, most of them should— most of them should have that or have the ability to add the Pico to that switch, but only on the dimmable ones, because Lutron does have some just pure, pure on/off.

Yeah.

Um, which they're not that much— I mean, they— I guess the only— trying to think of like— I was, I was, I was gonna say a fan, but they have a fan control switch.

Yeah, yeah. Well, but you know, some bulbs aren't dimmable, right? And so in those cases, you know, if that's what you have Yeah, like my, like my porch lights aren't— aren't—

I don't care if those are dimmable, dude.

My porch lights are dimmable.

Uh-huh.

Why? Like, I mean, so, okay, my porch lights are weird, dude.

Have you got like, you know, you got like some wine setting, you know?

I get—

well, honestly, like light, but you want to be able to light a candle.

It's actually kind of nice.

Romantic moment.

It's nicer than you might think for a couple of different reasons, but like I've got timers, old school, like, metal box timers where you gotta, like, set the dial.

Rotary dial.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've got 2 of those in my master bedroom closet.

Okay.

And one of them runs the porch lights.

Okay.

And so it turns them on and off at a certain time that you set, which is great.

Sure.

It's really, really handy. But those things are loud.

Until you wanna stay up late, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can manually turn it off, on, on and off, all that kinda stuff. But then, uh, one night I was like, the lights are— they're not working, they're not working, what's going on? And I figured out that by my front door there is a slider dimmer switch that turns those things on and off.

Huh.

So you can literally dim them.

So the rotary just turns it on and off, but then you got a separate dimmer switch that— I got you. Okay.

Yeah, it's, it's crazy. Uh, but then the other one we have, the other box that we have is for soffit plugs.

Soffit? Oh, for like Christmas lights.

I've got 2 soffit plugs on my porch.

Oh, that's cool.

It's really cool.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what's nice about— one of the reasons it's nice to have that dimmer switch is I can put Christmas lights up on my porch and, you know, I can still have a porch light on if I want to.

Yeah.

Dim it down if I don't want to. Um, so I don't know, it's kind of, kind of cool.

Yeah, so I dig it.

Yeah, it's weird though. Took me a little bit of time to figure out.

I bet.

Yeah. What is that? Why is it done like that? That's one of the things about my house. Like, there's light everywhere. Everywhere there's lights, which is nice.

Is it your kids' bathroom that has like the natural light?

Yeah, well, I've got 3 of them. I've got, I've got 3. They're like solar. Okay, it's like a What are they called? Like a solar light.

I think that's what it's called. Yeah.

And so there's 3 of them. If you look up on my roof though, they just look like domes.

Okay.

And there's one of them in the kitchen and one in our guest bathroom and then one in our master closet. It's kind of random. Yeah.

That's the one that you— I remember you telling me about that was kind of weird.

But what's odd is like, if you look at them, they have a blue tint to it whenever it's on because it's got a light inside of it. So there's like a solar-powered light bulb, right, that has got very short time span on it, like maybe 20 or 30 minutes. But when it's on, like during the daytime, you get extra light in the room from solar for some— for like a sun, uh, I don't know, solar panel?

It's not a solar panel, but it's like—

Solar roof?

I don't know the exact, but it basically, it lets sunlight into that room.

I don't know what they're called. Anyway, yes. There's a, there's a name. I'm just losing it. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Um, but there's 3 of them in my, in my house. They're, they're really kind of neat.

Yeah.

But they're randomly placed.

Yeah. The closet's a weird one.

That's a weird one. The kitchen, the bathroom. Okay. I understand those. But it's nice because you don't always have to have a light on to be able to see in those rooms.

Yeah.

In the daytime. Yeah, so kind of cool.

So, well, so I'll tell you one of the weird things that happened to us over the holidays is the— my Ecobee died. Now we've had it, I guess, I guess the switch? No, the thermostat.

Oh, the thermostat died?

The thermostat died. Oh yeah, um, it— I think we've had it for like 4 years, um, and it was, it was weird. And so like my wife called me and she's like, I don't think the air conditioner's working, and Again, we have a weird thing in our house. There's a switch on a wall where you can just turn the whole air conditioner off. I don't know why it's there, but it's there. If you just want to be the jerk in the house in the middle of summer, you know what? I'm going to—

That's right. Piss people off.

I'm just going to turn this off. And you can tell over the years where people have tried to tape over it. Oh yeah. Just tape it up. Don't turn this off. Don't turn this off.

Rather than just taking the switch out and hardwiring it all together.

Well, it's part of a group of switches, and I don't even know what the rest of them do, honestly. That's funny. Um, but anyway, so not only that, you gotta act—

you might accidentally switch it.

That's right, that's right. So when, when she called me and she's like, I don't think the air conditioner— like, my go-to is always like, did you check the switch? I'm sure one of the kids just, you know. So, and she's like, no, the switch is up. Like, we've had that, we've had that happen enough times where it's like, no, the switch is up. And so I was like, okay. Like, and she— I was like, well, So I tried to pull up the thermostat on my phone, and I was like, well, that's weird. It's not connecting. I can usually get on it and see what's going on.

Right.

That wasn't happening. And I was like, well, go check the thermostat. And she's like, it's not even on.

Uh-oh.

And I was like, well, that's weird. And so then I start checking. When I got home, I was like, I'm checking breakers. Breakers are working. And I had an old thermostat.

Okay.

Or no, I had a new one that I was planning on putting in the guest house. And I was like, you know what, I'll just— I'll try and plug this one in and see if it comes on. And so I got it all wired up and it had a battery in it, so it came on, but it was like, can't connect to the air conditioner. And I was like, what's going on?

Yeah.

So I was like, you know what, it's gonna be nice and cool tonight, right? We'll sleep it off. We'll call J-Hugh in the morning, right? So I called J-Hugh and I was like, hey bud, like, whenever you can, just come on by.

Right.

And, and, and check this thing out for me. He goes, dude, I'll be there tomorrow. So shout out to Affordable Air.

Yeah. No doubt.

They, they hooked us up. They came out and took care of us, like, the next day.

Okay.

He was on top of it. And he calls me and he said, well, we got 2 problems. And I was— and, like, here's the thing, man. Like, we just dropped, like, 10 grand on replacing the whole system. And I was like, there's no problems.

Right.

There's no problems.

There better not be any.

And he goes, something happened. So you have a shutoff in your, in your pan? And he goes, it tripped the— it tripped the pan sensor.

Okay. Was there water in it? Yeah.

And it was the line was clogged.

Okay. Well, that makes sense. That, that does happen.

Yeah, it does.

That's what it was supposed to.

It did exactly what it was supposed to. And I was like, oh, well, good. Great. I'm glad that worked. And he goes, but I can't get the thermostat to come back on. And I was like, what does that mean? He goes, It died. And I was like, how? Like, it was like, it was working fine until the pan sensor went off. And the pan sensor, like, like, so like, I, in my brain, I'm going, okay, so what happened here is the pan sensor, instead of saying, hey, just turn off, it's like, just die. It just killed it. It's like, I'm gonna make sure that this never happens again.

It's done.

That's right. I had one job, killed the thermostat.

Well, that sucks.

So we've got a loaner right now.

Okay.

Because I went to go buy one and I about lost my breath. It's like $200 now for those things.

Yeah.

And you can get the Google Nest one for like $80.

It's so much cheaper. And not only that, Amazon has one now too.

Doesn't it make the air just the same temperature?

Yeah. Well, and in some ways, people— what's interesting about those thermostats, so you've got the You've got the Nest, and you've got the Ecobee, and a lot of people think, oh, it's a smart thermostat, they do the same thing, because one of the things about the Nest is it, it's a learning one. Right.

Well, the Google Nest one's a little—

It's different.

It's different.

It doesn't have quite the functionality of the original Nest, right? But they're different. I mean, they're definitely different. I mean, the Ecobee, it really kind of works like a traditional thermostat, only you can control all of it on your phone.

Right.

And you, you can do all of that wirelessly and it does a great job as far as that goes. It's not like the most like feature-rich type of thing. It just does everything to where you can do it on your phone and you can connect that into, you know, your Alexa or HomeKit or whatever it is that you're using. Um, like, like people use HomeKit.

Said no one ever.

Sorry, Apple, you suck. I love Apple of everything except HomeKit.

HomeKit's the worst.

It's the worst. Anyway, so yeah, I— that, that's interesting though. But kids like— and I haven't, I haven't really looked into it, but I know Amazon has their own smart thermostat. Maybe it's great. I don't know. I'd love to, I'd love to have them ship us one and I would test it.

Oh sure, we'll give it a whirl. Yeah, so I'll put it on the guest house.

Exactly.

We're probably going to use this other one for me.

So what is the new one?

It's the one he loaned me was just a Honeywell.

Okay.

It's just, it's just a basic But again, this is what we were talking about before.

You got to move the lever back and forth.

No, it's not like that, thankfully. But it doesn't— I mean, it's a digital one. And Jay, he told me, he's like, here, these are the ones we lend out to people when theirs break. He goes, it's Wi-Fi capable if you want to do it. The issue with it is it doesn't have a— I don't know the term for it. So like, you know how like there's like cool and heat and then you can set it on auto?

Yeah.

And it'll have like, like on my Ecobee, it had like a high temperature and a low temperature, right? So if it gets, you know, so the heat will come on if it gets below this one and the cool will come on if it gets above this one.

Yep.

You can't do that with this one. It's either cool or heat.

Okay.

One or the other.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I just want to set it to a temp. Like, I want my house to stay at like, you know, 72, 73 degrees, right? Can't do that.

Yeah. Interesting.

So, um, so that's annoying.

Yeah.

And it's— I mean, it's not his fault. I mean, it's just, it's just, it's a, it's a loaner thermostat. Like, I can't complain.

Right. Um, and, and Honeywell is a good brand. In fact, they have— it is. I mean, it's a smart thermostat.

Yeah.

I mean, it does what it's supposed to do, but I'm surprised it doesn't have an auto.

I know, it was weird.

It's like, it's like that Ecobee switch, like the one I was talking about earlier, the light switch that doesn't have a dimmer on it. Like, what the— why? Right. What? You just decided, ah, screw dimmers, nobody's using those anymore.

We just need to toggle.

Right, yeah, on/off.

That's right.

Get over it. It's either day or night in your house.

That's right. Whatever.

Honeywell eventually was like, no one uses this auto setting.

Yeah.

We're not gonna put it in.

All that to say, we'll probably be doing a review on the Google Nest one.

Okay.

Because I'm gonna be installing that one.

I'm really interested because it's I mean, what is the main difference between the Nest and the Google Nest? Because Google basically bought it, right? I mean—

I don't know. I don't know the particulars on that.

Well, we're gonna find out.

We'll find out.

Okay.

Yeah. But it's much smaller. It doesn't have like the dial knob on it. 'Cause you can still get like the nicer Nest one.

Right.

So I really don't know the difference. We'll find out. We'll find out. I really don't care. I just want— I really like— I want to be able to control it from my phone.

Yeah.

And I want to be able to put it on auto. That's all I want.

Easy.

I mean, if you can do that, uh-huh, and then have like a, you know, a travel mode.

Yeah. That—

I'm good to go.

Yep.

So, and I'm sure this, this one has that.

We used to use the, uh, all the functionality of like, you know, turn off at this time, come on at this time, all that kind of stuff, because we both used to work out of out of the home.

Right.

Well, now my wife works in the home all the time. So she's rarely not there. So, like, that functionality isn't even helping. Yeah. It's just out the window. Yeah. And which is one of those things that I think with thermostats, it's like, how much are you actually moving and adjusting your thermostat?

Yeah.

I don't think most people are.

No.

Well, it—

well, we did have one of the things that we— okay. So this is— this is the part that's gonna be annoying to me is losing the Ecobee if I don't go back to another Ecobee is I had that whole thing set up on a geofence.

Uh-huh.

And, yeah. So my, my wife, she prefers to have the house a little bit warmer.

Okay.

Like, she's perfectly content if it's like 76, 77 degrees inside.

Okay.

Like, she's happy. So, and she's usually at home.

Yeah.

But when I come within 2 miles of the property, it kicks it on to where I like it.

Yeah.

And, and so she, she said her and the kids always know when I'm on my way home because there's like a chill in the air that hits the house. Oh, Frosty's coming home. That's right.

Right. That's funny.

That's funny.

That's pretty good.

But yeah, so, so I mean, so that, that whole fiasco happened. Yeah. But yeah. So you got any, any, any big predictions for 2023?

Well, I mean, it's always fun to kind of speculate about what's going to happen.

Absolutely. Give us plenty of opportunity to be wrong about something else.

Might as well be wrong. I mean, the likelihood of this being right is pretty slim. Um, look, I think one of the things that we're gonna find, and this is not good, um, I, I don't know if you've got some predictions too, but the one that I'm gonna throw out here, I— it's not something that I'm looking forward to if it comes true.

Right.

But I think so, you know, 2020 put everybody into this weird frenzy with the housing market, right? And 2021 really took a toll on people trying to, to move. And there was this weird, you know, everybody was like, if you remember, like 100 offers in 24 hours on some of these homes. Right.

Yeah.

And some of them were, you know, like $100,000 over asking price and, um, you know, all this kind of crazy stuff. Well, all of that really kind of came to a head and it died down and And now we're in a place where the interest rates rose so high that people stopped, you know, the, the buyer was no longer, um, it was no longer a seller's market. It was more of a buyer's market, and it currently is. Um, I was talking to Freddy the other day, and, uh, so I'm, I'm gonna give him the, the credit for this. But as we were talking, I'm like, man, that actually makes a lot of sense. And based on on what he was talking about. Um, I think that

2023, the housing market in 2023 is going to be worse than it was in that 2021 era where—

And when you say worse, you mean for the buyer?

Yeah. I think the buy— I think it's gonna become a seller's market again. Mm-hmm. But I think the buyers are gonna have a harder time buying a house. in 20— like, especially like mid to late 2023. I think it's got to— some things are going to shift. The interest rates are probably going to come down a little bit, and I think that people are going to be able to sell their house for whatever they want to. I mean, literally whatever they want to. And, and, and they're going to have— I think it's going to be worse than it was back then. And, uh, I, I, I hate that. Like, I, I, I do not think that it should be difficult to buy a house. I,

I think that if you wanna buy a house, you ought to be able to buy a house. And if someone wants to sell their house, just, like, don't make it crazy.

Yeah.

Just buy a house, sell a house. Like, why has it gotta be so difficult? Yeah.

I, I don't want it to be difficult for people to buy a house. I want it to be realistic for someone to buy a house.

I agree.

You know, and, and I think, you know, if we learned anything from 2008, it's like, not everybody is ready to buy a house.

Oh, yeah.

You know? And so when we start saying that everyone needs to be able to buy a home, it's like, no, not everyone needs to be able to buy a home.

Right.

Because not everyone is disciplined enough in their own personal finances, or they're just their own particular situation. Maybe they went through something really bad and they need some time to recover. I mean, that's why we have apartments. That's why we have affordable housing for people. I tend to— I actually disagree with Freddie. I don't I don't think the prices are going to go higher, mostly because I don't see the economy getting much better. I agree with that. If the economy doesn't get much better, the only option that they really— I mean, we saw this, right? The only trick that they have in their book to fight off inflation is to raise interest rates.

Yep. That's it.

And so if you raise interest rates, it's going to— and we saw this happen, right? As the interest rates went up, the prices kind of started to come back down. So people that were paying like $100,000 more or less for a house than they would've a year ago are paying the same amount because the interest rate is so much higher.

Right.

And so like the market can't really tolerate both of those things going up at the same time. If you— I mean, if you do that, you're setting yourself up, I think, for like a short-term crash. in which, you know, I mean, I think that if you— if that were to happen, and he's right, I think it would happen for about 6 months and then we'd have another 2008, you know. And, and, you know, be— and the only reason I don't think that's going to happen is because you're starting to hear from, uh, a lot of these builders and, and contractors that prices, prices on things are normalizing. Like, wood is, is back way down.

Yeah.

Um, other things, other things aren't. Sure. But, but wood is way back down, and that's a good indicator.

Yep.

The other thing that I, that I heard about recently is, you know, like, we, we haven't started to— usually what happens is something happens in another market that ends up trickling down to other markets. And so one of the things that's been happening recently is prices in England have been plummeting.

Wow.

And so there's, over the last— I think it's like over the last 2 to 3 months home sellers in England have been able— have, have been having to accept offers like somewhere between 3% and 10% less than list price.

Wow.

So, and that's, that's the complete opposite.

Oh yeah.

Of what we were seeing over the last 2 years.

Sure.

And so we just haven't— we haven't started seeing that yet. And what you have been seeing, I don't know if you've been watching this, but Uh, we've— one, we've been starting to see houses stay on the market.

Yeah.

Uh, longer.

Yeah.

Or just, or just stay on the market.

Yep.

And, and so, and this, this is where I think some people can fudge some of the numbers and say like, oh, we're, we're, we're— it's gonna be bigger and better. Because what you have is people who haven't moved a property that are still listing their property, or they're unlisting the property and they're relisting the property at a lower price.

Right.

And so then we're able to say— and then they sell it, and then we say, oh, that sold at list, right? And it— but it really didn't.

It didn't.

Um, and so I think we're— and but you can, you can actually change the list price even while it's still listed, and that actually gets you attention on prop— because all of those, um, uh, listing agent— not listing agents, but those, uh, databases, I mean, like, they'll notify you. Like, especially if it's a property you're like, I'm interested in this property, if the price drops on it, they'll tell you like, hey, the price dropped on this property.

Yeah. And you can even see it most of the time.

time, you can, you can see that it's what the initial list was and where they dropped it. Yeah. They'll, they'll tell you all that information. I mean, so, and, and, and some of the stuff we even talked about before, I mean, like Redfin and Zillow, like they are cleaning house still.

Oh yeah.

Firing people left and right. I mean, like, they, they, you know, and when you, when you start looking like an, an economic downturn, you know, it's not so much, you know, when, when we go into like a recession, It doesn't matter what the prices of houses are when no one has access to capital.

Right.

You know, I mean, like, they could, they could drop 50%, but it doesn't matter if the banks aren't lending money.

Wouldn't matter.

You know, when they, when they, when those guys tighten up and they start saying, like, well, you've got to do this, this, and this in order to qualify, and, like, no one can, you know, like, barely anyone can meet that threshold.

Right.

Doesn't matter what the price is. No one, no one can buy a house. So I don't know. I I tend to think that prices are going to go down, but I also think that everyone's money is going to be worth so much less that it won't matter what the price is. No one, you know, no one's— you're going to be spending too much on, you know, $7 loaves of bread.

Well, and I think that's, that's the other thing I was going to mention is like, it's— I, I think that because the prices of, of goods are going to go up so much, I mean, they're already are way up. I mean, I, I mean, our grocery bill is ridiculous, man. Like, it's crazy. And like, just for a bag of dog food, it's like $80, man. So stupid. So it's, it's difficult to, to do so many things. I mean, gas has kind of like normalized a little bit, and— but diesel is ridiculous.

Still high.

Yeah, so high. And, and so what I, what I think is going to happen is, you know, we've seen this revenge travel happen Right, where people like 2020, 2021, they weren't traveling. So 2022 was like the year of travel. People, people were going all the places they wanted to go. They had money saved up because they didn't go to that trip that they wanted to go on. So they had— they had—

Well, and a lot of the travel restrictions are gone too.

Exactly, exactly. So there's, there's a lot of things that have happened, but I think people are going to be forced to take fewer vacations. Yeah, just because they can't afford to.

I mean, I gotta tell you something I think is kinda funny is, you know, like, the last domino to fall from a lot of this COVID stuff was the cruise lines.

Uh-huh.

You know?

Yeah.

And because they just recently removed those restrictions.

Right.

And I can almost imagine, like, a lot of these businesses going, you know, like, we really believe in vaccines, but not so much that we wanna keep y'all from spending your money with us.

Exactly.

It's like, it was a fun year and a half, but we're Right. We're kinda done with you guys not paying us anymore.

Yeah, exactly.

Please just come. Like, you know, and like, those, those people, the anti-vax crowd, man, I mean, they're stubborn.

Oh, yeah. I mean, they really are.

So it's like, I, I, you know, I, if, if nothing else, I mean, like, they're like, alright, fine.

Yep.

We just won't do that anymore.

Exactly. They're fine with that.

Yeah.

And, and I get it. I mean, it's just like, look, I, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do, and you're not gonna tell me what I'm gonna do. So I think that, I, I just think that that's going to be a trend, is that somewhere along the line people are gonna have to draw a line and go, I can't afford something.

Right.

Well, they can't afford to, to just not drive. You're gonna keep putting fuel in your car, whether it's diesel or gas. Um, and, uh, I, you know, we've got these EVs that keep, you know, being present. And every— if you're, you're not a legitimate car company now if you don't have an electric vehicle on your line.

Dude, I saw one of those Rivians out on the road today.

Oh, did you?

It was nice looking.

I bet it was.

It was one of their SUVs, not one of their trucks, but it was, it was slick.

Interesting.

I was like, what is that?

Oh, that's a Rivian. There it is. Yeah. So I, I don't know. I, that's one of the predictions I've got is that I just think that people are gonna have to stay home.

Yeah. So, yeah, I, you know, as, as things have kind of turned, turned around, I do think there was a lot of people that felt like they had more money during COVID Sure. Because one, I mean, like, one, we had that a lot of people got that huge injection of cash into their bank accounts. I mean, just directly into their bank accounts. They weren't driving as much, so they weren't spending as much on gas. They weren't going out as much. And so they didn't have a lot of that entertainment expense. And so I think to a lot of people, it just felt like they had more money.

Right.

But still, I think, and somebody can fact check me on this. I was reading something about this the other day. The average American is carrying like $3,000 worth of credit card debt every month.

Every month, like adding to— They're just carrying it over every month. Carrying it over. Yeah.

And so they're literally living above their means. And, and, and it's just not sustainable.

Right.

And so, like, when you start talking, like, now, you know, one of our family members recently was, like, having to make the decision between buying a car and leasing a car.

Okay.

And I was just like, I don't, you know, it— something wrong with the camera?

Yep.

What happened?

It stopped. I'll keep going.

Okay. Um, but anyway, like, you know, you start looking at something like that, you, you, you talking about something where the prices haven't come down? Yeah, I mean, like, it's like, try and go buy a truck right now. Oh, I mean, like, we were, we were flabbergasted the other day just because the one of the, one of the truck lots, one of the big dealerships around here had more than like 10 trucks in the parking lot.

Oh yeah.

Which is nuts.

Yeah, finally.

It was like, oh my gosh. Whereas like in the past, it was not weird for the there to be like 50 trucks or 60 trucks or 100 trucks in the lot, right? And like, it's like, for a while there it was like, oh, there's, there's 4 trucks.

Yeah.

And you know, like, natural supply and demand says like, well, there's not as many, not as many trucks, price has got to go up, right? And it has, and it stayed there.

Yep.

I mean, like, a brand new truck with any sort of package, and you're looking at $60 grand easy.

And like, have you looked at these like quarter-ton trucks? Like, Ford Ranger, for example, it's like $40,000.

Yeah.

For, for what used to be a, a $20,000 vehicle. And I, and I get it, like, prices go up. I, I really understand all that, but $40,000?

Yeah, it's stupid.

For something like that?

I mean— I mean, that, that's something I, I mean, like, I think everybody can agree, like, let the prices need to come down on that.

They have to. Like, and—

or we need to go back to making simpler cars.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's— that's an— I mean, you wanna talk about people not having access, Well, and here, here's the crazy thing about that.

So, like, Jeep, for example, they have their, their Wrangler, which is the most successful Jeep product ever, right? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like, one of the most successful cars ever. They, they've got their— if you want a stripped-down version, you have to get one of their Willys line.

Uh-huh.

And it is a special order, and it's gonna have, you know, elec— not— no electric locks. No power windows.

Right.

That's gonna be all, all, you know, manual. Um, but they're more expensive.

Yeah.

Because you got to special order them. It's like, I'm getting, I'm getting a V— which, which a lot of people that want that, there's a reason they want that.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, they want like a ranch truck or—

Yeah. They want it to be—

Lease vehicle or something like a deer lease vehicle or something like that.

Exactly. But like, at the end of the day, why is something that— because, uh, here's the problem, they have to special make those.

Right.

That, that is now a special order item to have a manual lock instead of electrical. They don't build as many manual things as they do electric. And so, I mean, yeah, we're just, we're just in a weird age right now of like everything has to be smart, like we were talking about earlier. Everything has to be connected to a computer. Everything has to be Wi-Fi compatible. Everything has to be connected, which is fine. I love that. And I think most of us do.

Um, I love some of it. I love, I love most of it, but sure. There's some of it I'm like, well, it—

that's a question that I think that we're gonna have to answer as a society at some point. It's like, at what point is too much? Like, at what point is it ridiculous that, like you said, a loaf of bread—

Yeah.

Is so expensive? Why am I paying $5 for a gallon of milk?

Right.

Like, some of this stuff winds up being absolutely insane. I mean, um, these are, these are basic food items that we need in our diet, you know.

Yeah.

And we, you know, it's ridiculous because diesel fuel is so expensive. Diesel fuel is so expensive because of this and that. It just, it's this weird, weird trend. But I, I don't know. I mean, 2023 I think is going to, to be an interesting year because now we are 3 years removed from the beginning of COVID and things are, you know, going back to what, what I would consider normal. I mean, most people at this point are not concerned about getting COVID.

No.

I mean, if they do, they just kind of know, okay, well, I'll probably get over it.

And they're still announcing it on the internet though. It's like, I got COVID. Yeah, it's—

yeah.

And no, no one cares.

We, we just got back from New York. We went to New York City over, uh, Christmas break and, um, was fantastic. We had a great time. There's still a lot of people that were wearing masks. That's still a thing. We were at the zoo the other day and people outdoors were wearing masks.

Yeah.

Like, okay, that, that's important to them, and then maybe they got a health reason, it's fine, whatever. But for the majority of people— we were at NASA, uh, last week, dude, there were probably 30,000 people at NASA.

Yeah.

It was insane how many people were there. I mean, crowds and crowds and crowds of people, and most people didn't have masks on. Like, most of, most of the world has kind of said, okay, It is what it is. If I get it, I get it. I've got to move on.

But yeah, can you, can you imagine, like, can you imagine being in a business right now and requiring people to wear masks to come in your store?

Well, you would lose business.

You would lose your business.

Yes. Yeah.

At least around here.

You would around here for sure.

And yeah, you'd lose my business. I didn't go in there, right? I'm not wearing one of those stupid things.

Not anymore. I mean, I, in fact, I don't, I don't even know if I have any. Like, all the ones that I like bought special or whatever, like that I used all the time, like, I think I threw them away. Well, and we, I mean, like, we've just learned so much since all that.

I mean, like, everyone was like, well, I'll just make my own. It's like, well, that don't work, right? Yep. Doesn't do a thing. Nope. So in fact, that one that you bought doesn't do a thing because you're not wearing it right. It's like we've learned so much about everyone. Like, we're not experts in masks, but like, we just learned that like, well, we were all dumb and we were just doing like— sure, we were doing the only thing that we knew how to do and it wasn't working well.

And now, I mean, so much immunity has come, come about. from some of this anyway. But I, I just think that we're far enough removed at this point that 2023 is going to be kind of that year of like forgetting about COVID Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it would— that— oh yeah, that happened a while back. Um, so I, I think that that's going to impact a few things as well for the positive. I mean, I think nobody— it doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on about COVID everyone can agree it was horrible.

Yeah.

It was awful.

Well—

And I don't ever wanna go back to a pandemic in my life. Yeah.

I, I, I would like, I would like to think that 2023 would be the year that we forget about it, but it's not because, not because we're not gonna spend 2023 talking about it less. We are. It's just gonna come up again in the next election cycle. Yeah.

Oh, I, I think you're right about that.

I will.

I don't think we're gonna forget about it.

Yeah.

I just think it's gonna be a, a time where, where most people, even though it comes up again, I think most people are gonna roll their eyes at it.

Yeah. It's gonna be, it's gonna be like 6 months of remember the dumb thing that you did and the dumb thing that he did and the dumb thing that she did. like, yep, everyone was dumb. Yep, there was, there was a lot of dumb stuff done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so too. Um, yeah, it's, it's not going to be portrayed in a positive— like, it's not going to be a— it's going to be more of, of people fighting against saying you're going to do this and make life worse because of it. I think it's going to be more of that than, oh, look at what I'm going to do to, yeah, keep COVID from happening. It's not going to be that anymore.

I don't know.

It's going to be interesting.

I do think there's going to be a heavier emphasis and market for purification devices in the home.

Okay.

I'm starting to see some trends about water purification, trends on air purification, like introducing UV lights into your air conditioning system. Um, just all kinds of different— I had a guy approach me at church, uh, Dave. What was that, yesterday? Yesterday. And he was like, hey, have you heard of this water filtration system? And I'm like, no. And he's like, well, it's a— it makes your water— cures hard water without removing the minerals.

Okay.

And I'm like, okay. And like, he started showing me the webpage for it. I was like— he's like, you heard of this? And he just assumed I had because I do the show, right? I was like, man, I never heard that thing. I was like, but I'll look into it.

Yeah.

That's interesting. Nuova, I think is what it's called. Nuova. Nuova. I don't know. He said he was gonna send me the link. Interesting. But, yeah, just, like, just cool stuff that I'm seeing come out that's, like, interesting technology for the home.

Yeah. You know, it, one of the things is interesting. So right now we're building my mother-in-law's home. Right. Which, you know, at some point we will wind up doing an episode just on, on all of that. But, One of the things I think is fascinating is there's been no talk at all of any of that kind of thing.

Oh, really?

None. Well, first of all, like water purification, we have— we're on a well, right? And our well water is extremely good, right? We don't have any soft water systems. And around Houston, like most people that are on city water have water softeners because you almost have to, right? Um, we, we don't have any of that. We don't have a reverse osmosis system in our home. we just don't need it. Um, and we, we tied my mother-in-law into this, the existing well, so that was not a thing. But like, even with, with like HVAC stuff, like there's been no talk of like, do you want any type of UV or anything like that?

Is she doing traditional system or—

It's a tra— which we, we went back and forth on this, um, because I, I wanted her to consider a mini-split system because it's a barndominium. So a lot of people do that kind of thing, um, but she didn't like the look of the mini split system, so she decided to go with a traditional, which is fine. Um, but you know, there was no talk of any filtration system at all, which, you know, I think that if I were an HVAC guy, I might be pushing that a little bit.

A little bit, yeah.

You know, just like, hey, we can, for an extra $1,000, $1,500, we can add a UV light to this and, and, you know, clean your air, whatever. Um, but that was never a conversation. So I find that to be interesting.

Yeah. Well, dude, we're, we're coming up on the hour.

Yeah.

Wanna wrap this thing up?

Yep. Absolutely.

All right.

It's been good. Yeah. All right, guys. Thank you for being here. And, uh, man, we had a lot of people on the live tonight.

We did. Yeah.

Yep. Good stuff.

Thank you all for joining.

That's right. Uh, we're here each and every Tuesday. through the entire year. We haven't missed a Tuesday yet.

Yeah.

This year.

Yeah.

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