Snowmageddon 2021

Oh, this is episode 129. This is episode number 129 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, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and brrr, because yeah, baby, it's cold outside.

Holy cow.

And no, I did not call Kevin baby.

No, man, it is frigid.

Yeah.

It is colder than I have ever felt in my entire life.

Bing Crosby wouldn't even sing about this. No, it's ridiculous outside.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's— yeah, I don't— I'll put it, I'll put it this way. I've been at your house for like 24 hours at this point because my house was just no power.

Right.

Gone.

When did it go out?

So my power left. So we're recording this on Tuesday, um, which is the day that our podcasts normally come out, but we're a week early, right? We wanted to go ahead and get live on this, um, so this episode will actually come out a week late. But, uh, my, my power went out at 5 AM on Monday, okay, which was the 15th of February, and I— we made it till about 4 o'clock, I think it was.

Yeah.

3:30, something like that. Um, and, and we've got, we've got natural gas at our house, so we've got a, a gas-burning fireplace. But I don't know what's up with it because it's just gas logs in there, but I think it's actually set up to be wood burning, right? More than it is set up to be gas logs, because really what I've got is I've got a gas pipe at the bottom Um, and a rack in there that you're supposed to put wood on, use the gas to light it, turn the gas off, right?

Right.

But what they did, the, the previous owners, they just bought, um, like ceramic logs, or they may actually be concrete. They're super heavy, and, um, and they're, they're kind of concrete logs. Yeah, they're kind of brittle too, so I don't know what they are.

Is that even a thing?

I don't know. I don't know. Someone, someone probably knows more than I do about this.

All right.

And so we gotta get, we gotta get down to the bottom of this. Yeah, we do. So I, uh, I turned it on and closed the door to the living room because it was getting cold. And we start getting a smell, like a, like a gas smell, right? But it, but it's a little bit different than a, than a regular gas smell. Um, and I made sure we had our CO2 detector in there.

Right.

Never went off. And we were in there for probably 6 hours, 7 hours.

Yeah.

And, um, it just— we, we had problems. And so I, I wound up opening the flue to— but that let all the heat go out. And so we were just problematic, and my kids were having a hard time, and, uh, the smell was kind of getting to us. And so I called you up and I was like, hey man, like, what's up? And you told me to come over. So we came over.

Yeah.

Spent the night last night. Um, apparently our power came on at 8 PM last night. We were already— kids were already in bed, so we just, you know, kind of left it the way it was. Um, but at 4 o'clock this morning, the power went off at my house again. And I'm able to find that information out because I got an eROE Wi-Fi system, right?

So every time it comes on, you can—

I know. And also I've got the Ecobee thermostats, right? So I can actually see how cold it is in my house when I've got power. So when the power came back on, um, it— my house was 49 degrees at 8 o'clock. So I'm kind of glad we got out of there.

Yeah. And then I'm like, we've, we've talked to some folks that are like still in their house. Yeah. And it's in the 40s.

Oh yeah.

And that's because this morning It was like 6 degrees outside.

Right. Yeah, it was insane. And so, uh, so the power went off at 4, and about 2— what, right at 2 hours ago, so 2:20-ish, I just happened to check my app. And I checked it about 20 or 30 minutes before that, it was still out. 2:20, I checked it, everything was on, my furnaces were firing up. Yeah, it was 48 in my house this time. And, uh, And they're heated up. I'm gonna actually look right now live on here and find out if I'm still up. But man, it's crazy.

Yeah.

It's absolutely crazy.

Yeah, and like, you know, we were— this morning we were talking because our friend Ashley was at the grocery store. Somehow she made it to the grocery store.

Yeah.

And I think you said like when you were watching her video, like the line at the grocery store was like wrapped around the inside of the store.

Yeah, so first of all, let me say my power's still on. salon.

Woohoo! Hey, hey.

Um, so you can actually— I'll put it here and you can see I got it set at a reasonable temperature too. Reasonable. There we go. Reasonable temperature. Yep. So, um, so yeah, Ashley Allwood, our chamber friend.

Oh, she's not there anymore.

I know, but she was our chamber friend. She was our chamber friend originally.

Um, we're just not friends anymore.

Yeah, exactly. So she lives in the same neighborhood as I do.

Yeah.

Uh, but she, she drove to H-E-B and she went live because H-E-B opened for like 5 hours today just for, you know, people that need it, right? That's everybody.

Everybody.

And so they showed up and, and all of the containers that have like cheese, meat, all that kind of stuff, completely empty. And she's standing— Is it fire sale yet? Yeah, she, she's standing right there and doing this live, and she said, I'm standing in line to check out. Those of you who know H-E-B, that area is at the very back of the store.

Yeah.

And it was wrapped all the way around to the longest way.

Yeah.

That it could possibly— and there are people behind her.

Yeah.

At the store, and, and they're just trying to get food, and, you know, it's insane.

Well, and let me— I, I went, I went to an H-E-B on Valentine's Day. Yeah. And I was Now, everyone started making fun of me because I posted this on Facebook. They thought I'd forgotten to get my wife a Valentine's.

Right.

Which is not true.

No.

I was there picking up some things that we needed for food.

Yeah, because you had already gotten her tree.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because y'all are different.

Yes. We get each other trees for Valentine's Day. Have I ever told that story? How do we do that? I don't know.

Whether you've told it or not, it's worth telling again.

Like right now?

Sure!

OK. Let me finish the H-E-B thing.

OK.

Anyway, that day was ridiculous. There were lots of people there getting Valentine's things. They had every register open at the store. Which is a lot. And still, the lines for each register went halfway deep into the store. There were aisles of the store that you physically couldn't get down because the lines for the register were taking up those aisles.

Right.

That was before all this stuff happened.

This was really probably a culmination of things, right? It was probably a culmination of people that forgot Valentine's Day and they're going, oh crap. Yeah.

And people that had just, you know, like forgotten or hadn't, hadn't had time to do any prep work for the, you know, the coming snowmageddon.

It's bread, bread and milk type of thing, right?

So, and like, you know, that, that's a— so now a lot of people's Well, and I'm gonna forget to tell the tree story.

Don't forget.

So, okay, so since it was just Valentine's, I will tell this story. So one of our very first fights as a couple was on Valentine's. This was before we were married. So, you know, many, you know, at least a decade ago, more than a decade, but yeah. So we had a pretty bad fight. And, you know, when you fight, you tend to say things that are stupid.

Sure.

And I am no exception to that rule. So, and I, like, I've never really been like the very traditionally romantic type of, like, I don't like doing things on Valentine's Day, mostly because it feels like people are telling me that I have to do things on Valentine's Day.

Yeah.

I wanna do things on other days.

Sure.

And my then girlfriend, now wife, was like, look, Valentine's is a big deal to me. I need you to make a big deal out of it. And I was like, look, you making me celebrate Valentine's Day is like if trees were important to me and I made you celebrate Arbor Day, which is dumb.

It is.

It was a terrible argument.

Right.

She didn't forget that though. So when we got engaged, she said, when do you wanna get married? I said, I don't care, whatever day you wanna pick. So she picked National Arbor Day.

And what, okay, this is how your marriage is beginning.

Yes.

A crazy fight conversation turned into wedding day marriage beginning.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Yep.

That's awesome. That's really awesome.

The best marriages are built on spite.

It's worked out so far.

It's worked. Yeah. So we got married in, it's April 28th is National Arbor Day for those that don't know. And so our very first Valentine's Day, in order to get back at her, I bought her a bunch of trees.

Hmm.

So, yeah, and it's become a tradition now.

Wow.

So, and it's usually like a fruit tree or a nut tree or something that we can, we can put out here on the property.

Yeah.

So one of the very first ones was actually a blood orange tree, and we didn't have a place at the time. That was our first one, and that's at my parents' house. It's in the ground and it actually makes really delicious oranges.

Wow.

So, which I'm going to have to go check on that and make sure it survived this thing.

Yeah. And your parents have had a go of it as well. So, So first of all, what's bizarre is that you have not lost power yet.

No.

And so, so kind of the state of things right now is that the power grid has gone down.

Everywhere.

Everywhere. And it started here in Southeast Texas. There's 2 major plants that went down that supply a lot of the rest of the state. And part of that is because it's oil and gas down here. We've got all of the natural resources to be able to do that. And so they— you read different things online, and some of them are going to tell you it's this person's fault or this person's fault or whatever the case is. No matter what, something didn't work and the power grid failed.

Right.

And so not only did it fail here, it sent a trickle chain reaction through the rest of the state. And all over the state of Texas and also into Louisiana, there are power outages that are caused by this problem. There are some solutions to this in order to bring everybody back on and not overloading the system. They do what they call rolling blackouts.

Right.

But the rolling blackouts only work if your equipment is working. And so there's a couple of things that have happened. One of them is that, um, the equipment has failed and it's broken because of the storm itself.

Right.

So those people are not getting power at all. And I think that's actually where, where we were, because the rolling blackouts were supposed to be 2 hours with power and between 4 and 6 hours without power. But we weren't getting those. We did get power for a short time last night, but then the equipment failed. And then we were out without power for a while. So I'm really hopeful that right now our power is stable.

Right.

It's been on now for an hour.

No, 2.

No, 1 hour. It's been on for 1 hour and we're good so far. Or maybe it's been 2. I think it's been 2.

2 hours?

2 hours and we're good so far.

Yeah, and like, We didn't do anything special. We're just kind of like a unicorn over here. We're kind of waiting for it to go out, and it just hasn't happened. We've been extremely fortunate compared to the way other people have been experiencing the last couple of days.

Y'all are on a completely different company. Y'all are on a company called MidSouth.

MidSouth, yeah.

We're on Entergy. But there's something about— even people on MidSouth were working on, on, uh, blackouts, rolling blackouts. They were like 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off, which is actually not bad, right? The 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off makes a lot of sense because even if it gets cold in your house, 30 minutes is not going to really pull the temperature down too, too far, right?

Um, but you also can't get a whole lot done, and like, you better be ready when that 30 minutes hits and— yeah, and get some stuff going.

Yeah, and, and you need to make sure at that point that your computer's charged up and know, I mean, it's one of those deals where when you lose power, you lose Wi-Fi.

Right.

Right? And so there's a lot of these different things that, um, that you have to deal with. And so schools around here have just shut down. Uh, right now, the school district we're in, they've shut down tomorrow, and I think they're gonna go day by day. One of the other school districts in the area has shut down through Thursday. Um, my wife's school district which is a virtual school, they've actually shut down for the rest of the week.

That's what ours did. It shut down for the whole week.

Yeah. So, which I mean is smart.

I mean, like honestly, I mean, like I think at this point with what we've been experiencing, I mean, like you don't need to be on the road.

No.

At all.

No.

I mean, unless it's an emergency and like, or you don't have food or you need medical attention or something like that, you just don't need to be out on the road, which makes the power outages even more precarious because I mean, People want to get out and get to someplace warm.

Right.

But they also don't want to leave their house and, you know, make it vulnerable to like pipes freezing and other damage that this storm can do that houses here just aren't built for.

No.

You know, and so it's not— it's not an issue of like, oh, we don't like the cold. And the issue has become like our properties are now vulnerable.

Yes.

And because, I mean, like, I've lived here for close to 30 years. It's never been this cold.

Yeah. Well, you know, and I've lived in Texas. my entire life except for a 10-year span. And I grew up in the Panhandle where it gets a lot colder than it does here. I mean, it's, it's regular that it would be, you know, down below freezing there. And never have I seen anything like this.

Yeah.

I've experienced snow, I've experienced ice, but 7-degree temps in Houston? and, and like 0 and 1 degree temperatures in, in the northern Panhandle.

Yeah.

And that's just the— that's the actual temperature. The feels-like temperature is in the negative. Like, I've seen -15 around here. And so, uh, you know, we've got a friend, um, and he's from New York, and then he said, look, I know a lot of people up north are saying, ah, you Southerners don't know how to handle the cold. Okay, somewhat valid, right? We're not used to it, right? But that being said, he said our, our homes here are not built for it. He said when I lived in New York, he had a, um, he had an internal shutoff for his outside water faucets, right? He could turn those off inside, therefore no possible breakage on the outside of the house, right? And we just, we're not built that way.

Yeah.

You know, And, and why would we? There's not really a reason to be built that way. So, so yeah, it's, it's like, it's like problem meets problem equals catastrophe. Right. And, and that's kind of where we're at.

Yeah. And like, you know, on here on the property, I mean, we, we probably got a good 4 inches of snow.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's a, that, that's a lot of snow for Houston.

Yeah.

I mean, It snowed here the year we moved here, which was 2017. It, it snowed, um, like an inch, and it lasted about—

Probably like a dusting.

Yeah, like 24 hours and it was gone. Um, the thing is, we're supposed to get another storm tonight. 100% ice is what it's supposed to do. Just raining ice, straight sleet. Yeah, exactly. So it's gonna make things even worse. Worse.

Yeah.

Right. And so, you know, who knows what the power's gonna do tonight? I mean, it, it could go out again.

Yeah. Um, and, uh, so, well, and I, I think, you know, if, if nothing else, you know, it's not to dog on anybody about this, but like, this is a good opportunity to learn a, a lesson in preparation.

That I completely agree.

So be, I mean, Because this is something that you really couldn't be all that prepared for. You could be somewhat prepared for.

Yeah.

You know, and, and like, we, we have things in our, in our home that had the power gone out, we would have been okay.

Yeah.

You know, we— one of the things, one of the first things to go in this area when people started catching wind that the temperatures were going to be dropping and that there was going to be Like, not just like low temperatures, but like really low temperatures. Propane. Propane was one. I mean, like you couldn't find it.

Yeah.

To save your life. Well, I mean, I wasn't all that panicked about it because I had, uh, 3 20-pound containers of propane already. Yeah. That I, that I just keep.

Yep.

Um, just in case.

Yep.

And it's not ex— I mean, like that, like the initial, uh, propane canister I think was like $30 or $40 apiece. Yeah. But I mean, they cost $15 to refill. Mm-hmm. It's not, it's not a big expense.

Right.

To have, but like, again, a propane tank is no good without a propane heater or, you know, something to cook with it, you know, or, you know, or even like just like having an extra bag of charcoal around. I mean, one, it's a source of heat. Two, it's something to cook on. I will tell you one of the things I do wish that we had that we don't have is I've always wanted a, A portable cast iron stove.

Oh, yeah.

Um, I mean, they're burdensome and big and heavy and all that kind of stuff, but like, they can really put out a lot of heat.

Yeah.

Um, and, and warm up an area.

Yeah.

Um, you just need a vent pipe to get the smoke out.

Sure.

Um, but, but all that to say, I mean, like, we, we found ourselves in, in a, in a better prepared situation. But like, even though we were prepared, we were still scrambling around here trying to, you know, get pipes wrapped and get things covered up because we got like we have pool equipment that's not used to seeing, you know, sub-30 temperatures.

No.

Um, no.

Yeah, so we, we, we have, uh, actually we have 2 30-pound propane tanks, so same amount of propane, right, as what you have here. Um, and I've got a propane stove, right? Uh, just a camping stove, but it's 2-burner propane stove. So I made sure that I've got the hookups in order to do all of that, so we were prepared for that. Um, What I wasn't prepared for was my fireplace to not work the way I expected it to.

Right.

And part of that is because we don't turn it on.

Right.

It's not cold enough around here to, to need to turn it on, right? So we just don't turn it on that often. I've turned it on, but just not very, not very much. And so that's something that I know I'm gonna have to get inspected, uh, once we get this all kind of moved out of here. But I think that one of the things that you need to do on your home before next winter, maybe even, you know, as soon as you can find it, is go get pipe insulation.

Mm-hmm.

Get some, keep it on hand, because we actually had a situation, um, the first house we ever lived in, my wife and I, we had a small dog. Uh, he turned into a big dog, but he, he was a puppy.

Right.

Is Raider, and he chewed off that insulation from, from the air conditioner to the house multiple times. And other animals will chew that stuff. Squirrels will take it, uh, birds will take it. And so having some of that on hand is really helpful. Um, and you know, we, we wound up having some exposed pipes, so we wrapped them in towels and duct taped them. We also had to wrap our, our hot water— I mean, our, uh, our water softener because it's outside. A lot of people are like, why would you put it outside? Because it's Houston.

Mm-hmm.

And a lot of people have them outside. So we had to wrap that with a blanket, duct tape that as well. Um, covering all your faucets, right? I mean, having those, those foam covers, or for us, we actually have quarter-turn, uh, knobs on all of our, uh, all of our outside faucets. And so we had to go on Amazon and buy a sleeve that is insulated, they'll go over that. Um, winterizing your, your, uh, irrigation system, so your sprinkler system, right?

Mm-hmm.

Winterizing that, it's, it's a smart thing to do. It's pretty easy to do. And if, and if like mine, I have a problem winterizing mine because I need to replace my backflow preventer. Well, that probably needs to get done sooner than later. You know, there, these are some things that I think that sometimes we don't consider until we get to the the point when we need it, and then we really need it, and it's too late, you know? So we gotta work on that. We get— we gotta be better prepared, I think. Yeah, uh, for stuff like that.

Hey everybody, we want to take a second to thank this week's show sponsor. This week's sponsor is Living Safe at Home Disinfecting Services. Uh, if you missed last week's episode, man, did you miss a great episode. If you want to go back and listen to that, that's episode 128. with Matt and Chase from Living Safe at Home. We get into great detail as to what sort of services they provide. Let me tell you guys, they have the technology and the equipment to fully disinfect your home. They came in the studio and showed us just how disgusting our doorknob was. They showed us the before statistics and then they showed us the after statistics after they disinfected the doorknob. After I saw the results,

I had them go ahead and disinfect the entire studio. Man, do I feel better about being in here right now. If you guys are interested in having your home disinfected, now is a great time to get that done. You can reach them at 512-917-8654. That's 512-917-8654. Or you can reach them at info@livingsafeathome.com or go to the website, www.livingsafeathome.com. Or This is really cool. You can just go to Facebook and book an appointment, and they will come in and they will test your home and show you all of the trouble areas where you might be having a problem and show you how they can disinfect that area for you. Man, this is an incredible service that we all

could be taking advantage of right now and probably need in our homes since we've been stuck in there and probably just, you know, making it gross with our constant presence. So give the guys over at Living safe at home a call and get your home disinfected. Christy Fennell was watching and she she just commented and said, "I think I love your wife." Oh, you and me both, Christy.

Yeah, yeah.

It's probably because my wife did the the Valentine's Day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dude, the the when you're talking about sprinkler systems, one of the big ones that happens around here. is the, um, the backflow preventers.

Yes, man.

So I— my very first house that my wife and I had, we, we had one of those. And, you know, I was, you know, new homeowner, complete idiot, and it was our first winter and I didn't cover the thing.

Yeah.

And we had a hard freeze come through, it froze it, and then it thawed. And when it did, that thing busted.

And that bell— yes, on top, it just Busted.

And so it was, it was like 38 degrees outside with this giant water fountain shooting outta the side of my house. And I had to go out there and I, I kind of freaked out cuz I didn't, I was like, I gotta turn this thing off. And so I wasn't really, I, I think I was wearing like a bathrobe or something like that.

Oh man.

And the, I just got soaked.

Oh yeah.

At 38 degrees. Yeah. And I had to get in there and, and it took me a while to, I mean, cuz again, that's a valve that you don't use all the time. Right.

So you don't even know which one to turn.

Yeah. And so I'm, you know, getting in there with that janky thing and trying to turn it off. I was so miserable.

Yeah, and that's actually one of the things that—

And then you can't find them, you know.

No, you know, because everybody has them, everybody wants them.

Well, everybody wants them because everybody's froze.

Everybody's froze. Yeah, so I, I actually wrapped mine in some insulation, but then I bought— again, going back to the sleeves that I used for my faucets— I bought a, uh, a cover that goes all the way over that thing. And man, they're, they're awesome. They're not that expensive. I think it was like $20, but—

Right.

$20—

That's nothing.

To prevent a problem is well worth the money.

Yeah.

You know?

And that's the thing with some of this stuff, man, is like when you're in this situation, like going back to the propane, like you could have gotten that propane for, you know, $15, $20, whatever it is.

Yup.

which when you don't need it, it feels like, I don't want to spend that money.

Sure.

Right? But like right now, if you didn't have it, you would pay almost 10 times that amount to get it and have it and be able to use it.

And really propane's pretty inexpensive. It's an inexpensive fuel source. I mean, it's cheaper than gas.

I think it's more expensive than natural gas.

Yeah, it is. But mainly it's more expensive because because of— it's got to be contained. Like, right, the way they dispense it is different, and I think it just takes more manpower to do so.

Right.

Um, so yeah, it's more expensive, but if you don't have natural gas—

Yeah.

I mean, one of the things that we would have been able to do had we been at home and our gas fireplace didn't work, like it's not really working the way we wanted to, is if we would have had a propane heater like you've got here, we would have been fine. We'd have been completely fine. And I would have been fine leaving that thing on all night.

Yeah.

And sleeping with it. Um, I wasn't comfortable sleeping with my fireplace with the smell. Yeah, I was not comfortable, uh, especially with my kids. I just wasn't, wasn't comfortable. But so we need that little portable heater, we would have been fine.

Do you guys have electric space heaters and stuff like that at your house?

Yeah, we've got a few. And I've got one of those, uh, I've got one of those like radiator Heaters, that's electric. That thing's awesome. Heck yeah, man. So awesome.

When it gets cold, like we have one of those specifically for our bathroom for when it gets cold like this.

Yeah.

'Cause everything in our bathroom is tile.

Right.

And it's on the corner of the house. And so it always gets colder than everything else.

Right.

But that radiator does its job. It radiates heat and, you know, kind of dispels the cold from the room. I don't wanna finish this episode without talking about what happened with my folks.

Oh yeah, we kind of glossed over that for a minute. No, it was just kind of scary.

last night because, you know, like, I feel, you know, relatively prepared for situations like this. It's not a, you know, no matter what, you know, whatever domino fell, I had a backup plan.

Yeah.

You know, my parents are in a much better situation than we are in the sense that they have a backup generator.

Yes.

And it can power the garage and the house and keep everything. And they also have a fireplace.

Yeah, it's a whole home generator, dedicated generator. Yes.

Okay. And it's, it's a natural gas one.

Yeah.

So I mean, like, you know, constant fuel.

Yeah.

Uh, fed from the utility. Um, it's, it's fantastic.

Yeah.

It's fantastic when it works. And it just shut off last night.

Man.

And it was like, what time was it that they called? Uh, I wanna say it was like 9 o'clock.

It was probably 9 o'clock. Yeah.

And like, at that point, I mean, like, we could try and get to them.

Yeah.

But I mean—

Well, the roads were, the roads were probably bad and they live They live 40 minutes away from here. Oh, easy.

Yeah.

Maybe 45. That's without the problem. It would have taken us probably 2 hours to get there.

Oh, easily.

Easy.

And well, and they could have tried to come here, but same issue.

Yep.

You know, um, and so my dad went out there and he, I mean, he got it. He was finally able to get it to run. But when I talked to him this morning, he was like, yeah, I was able to get it to run, but it would just turn off every 45 minutes. And they, and You know, it's like, this would— they couldn't get ahold of the company that installed it.

Yeah.

And it's like, guys, this is— I mean, the phone number wouldn't answer. It wouldn't— I mean, like, it wouldn't even mean forwarded to like a tech who could like possibly talk somebody through this situation. They're just shut down.

Yeah.

And it's like, this is your time to shine.

Right.

You know, like, this is when people actually really need you.

Yep.

And you're not there.

Right.

So, and I mean, and you know, it's a Kohler engine from Generac. It's a good company. They had just spent a bunch of money updating the system. It had some repairs that it needed. And it's like, I imagine once they do get ahold of somebody, they're gonna be having, you know, having a frustrating conversation.

Sure. Yeah, because that's what this thing is designed to do.

Is, yeah, to keep your house up and running when, you know, everything else goes down.

Yep. And those things, I mean, okay, we're gonna talk about something here else related to generators here in a minute, but We're talking about like on a, on a typical house around here, 2,000, 2,500 square foot, whatever. Um, I mean, those things can cost 15 grand easy, even more than that if you want it to power absolutely everything all at once.

Yeah.

And that is not a small amount of money. If you're gonna put that money into it, it better work whenever you need it to, you know? So that, yeah, that's a bad deal. For sure.

Yeah, we were, we were not happy. No, I was not happy.

And rightly so. So, and thankfully we were able to help them because another problem is they were, they couldn't even get on YouTube to figure out how to fix it.

Because their power was down, they didn't have any internet, and their cell signal wasn't great. And she, and she was like, can you like find a video and text it to me?

And they just, it ultimately needed oil. And they, and I mean, I mean, that may not be the only thing, but ultimately it needed oil. and they didn't know what kind to put in it. So we were able to help, and he just happened to have some of that oil laying around. It's kind of lucky.

Yeah, you know, that's also kind of who he is. He's gonna have it. Sure.

But okay, so here's the thing. Like, if you don't want to spend $15,000 for a generator, there are some really good alternatives.

Sure.

And, and one of those is to get a portable generator, right? And a lot of people will do that, but those things can be frustrating Because typically what you're doing is you're running an extension cord into your house. You can't, you can't run that thing in your house, uh, running extension cord into your house to power your refrigerator or your washer dryer or, you know.

Well, particularly when it's cold like this, right? I mean, you don't wanna, you don't wanna like, you don't want that warm air getting out.

Right. And, and so you can't really leave, you don't wanna leave that door open. And, and so how do you, how do you do that, you know, smartly?

Mm-hmm.

Or a window even. How do you do that smartly? So, I mean, there's different things that people can do, but, uh, there's a much better system.

Mm-hmm.

And I've— my neighbor actually did this, and he's the one that put it— put me onto it. Um, and there's a few different, uh, there's a few different devices out there. Um, but specifically the one that I've looked at is called Gen Interlock.

Mm-hmm.

So it's geninterlock.com, and I'll—

we'll put—

post this up in the show notes. But what it does is you basically install this on the outside of your house. Um, next to your electrical panel. And with it, you have the ability to turn off the power to your electrical panel from the utility company and bypass it with your generator. So what you do then is that you can flip on whatever breakers you want to flip to, to power your house, right? You can do that from outside.

Okay.

And so, for instance, if you want your air conditioner to run, as long as you have a generator that will do that, Um, then, then you can do that. Your lights, whatever, you just turn on the breakers that you want, you're good to go. So my plan, it's, it's kind of funny, I, I intended to get this done before hurricane season next year because that's typically when our power outages happen, right?

Yeah. Never considered needing like August, September.

Yeah, exactly. So I thought this summer I'll get on it, no big deal.

You're like, I have time.

I know, I do. Who, who expected Snowmageddon to happen, right? Um, but I'm gonna get a— I've looked at a couple different ones. If you get it around a 10,000-watt generator, which you can get those for around $1,000, $1,100, um, you can power your air conditioner, right?

Right.

And, and there's not a generator out there if you don't have a hookup to your house with a transfer switch like I'm talking about. This Generac's called Transfer Switch. If you don't have a transfer switch, um, you can't run your AC.

Right.

Right. This allows you to run your AC, including your heater, right? And so about $1,000 for that. And this system, depending on which one you get and who installs it, costs anywhere from $500 to $800 probably. So for less than $2,000, you can have a portable generator that's not connected. So if you need to take that camping with you, if you need to take it to a job site, wherever, you've got a portable generator that is a 50-amp generator. That's a, that's a big dude. Um, and you can power your house. So there are cheaper ways to get around a whole home generator, uh, that'll, that'll do something that can keep you safe. And I mean, because we're talking about safety here, right? I mean,

there, there was a— here in Houston, I don't know if you saw this, Craig, but there was a, uh, a mom and daughter who died from carbon monoxide because they were— because they were in their car in the garage trying to stay warm.

Trying to stay warm.

And the CO2 killed them.

Jeez.

And there's been house fires from people trying to run, uh, like a propane or natural gas stove in their house. Something catches on fire, boom. Yep. Because they're trying to heat their house with sources that were not intended to heat their house. Yeah, right. So, uh, being prepared for something like this, yeah, it might cost a little bit of money, but we're experiencing sub-zero temperatures in some parts of the state and definitely sustained sub-freezing temperatures. Yeah, that our houses are— if we don't prepare for it, man, we're gonna be in trouble. Yeah, we— when we have— we've seen that happen. Yeah, for sure.

And it can get ugly really, really quick.

Yeah. And, and, and I'll tell you, like, what's been really cool through this is I've seen people that have generators, people that have lost— have not lost power, who are opening their homes. They've got an extra bedroom. Hey, we can put you down on an air mattress. Come over, we've got food.

Yeah.

Checking on their neighbors. I actually saw on Facebook in my neighborhood, someone had posted and said, hey, my mom lives in the neighborhood. Her phone died. I can't get ahold of her. She lives in the apartments. I'm really concerned. That's all she said. And someone said, hey, I live in the apartments. Give me her apartment number.

I'll go check on her.

So I mean, those types of things, just extremely heartwarming stories of people doing everything they can to help.

Yeah. And I think that is one of the upsides of situations like this is it does tend to bring out the best in some people.

Yeah. I mean, it really gives people the opportunity to shine and to show, look, I'm not as selfish as people think I might be.

So it's— yeah, man. I, you know, one, one of the things that— the reason I harp on, on preparation on stuff like this, one, I'm not the best at it, but two, I, I hate seeing people in desperate situations.

Yeah.

You know, and that's what this does is it, it, it turns into desperation.

Yeah. And, and people want— in desperate situations, people do things that they would never do otherwise.

Right.

And that's why we're seeing people sliding off the roads or sliding into each other. Because they're desperate. They, you know, I mean, your, your father-in-law works at a hardware store and he was talking about yesterday that, that he was trying, helping people all day long coming in going, I got busted pipes, which, you know, it's been the biggest thing. Yeah.

Is busted pipes.

Yeah.

That's another thing we've been lucky with is like, I mean, like, yeah, no busted pipes so far.

That's right. And, and, you know, that's one of those situations you can't prepare for. And I mean, you can do your best, but if a pipe busts and you've got it treated as well as you can, it is what it is.

Yeah.

So you got to fix it. So people were in there. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt that they had prepared and still were in there, but they're in a desperate situation. They got to go out and do stuff, um, that they might not have done before. They're putting themselves on the road and in, in vehicles that are not meant to be in the snow and on the ice and Um, plus we're not used to driving in those conditions. Yeah. And it's dangerous.

Yeah.

You know?

Well, and like, I, I know, you know, like this is, this is not the episode we had, we had planned for this week, but I, we didn't wanna miss the opportunity to jump on here and, and talk about some of the stuff that we, you know, if, if, if for nothing else, for, you know, historical purposes. Yes. I mean, we can go back and like go, oh, what was it? What was that really like? I mean, like, you know, we're, we're gonna have this, this conversation, uh, to, to look back at and go like, what was, what was that really like in '21?

And I was over here anyway.

Yeah. It's convenient. That's right. That's right. So, but I, but I do wanna say like, if you are, if you are in the area and you need help with something, uh, we, we have a lot of friends in, in, in businesses and with, you know, uh, I don't know. I don't know the word I'm like, but like, like service industries for sure. Yeah. We, we have, we have people, people that we know that are willing to help.

Yeah.

Um, either whether that be, you know, plumbing, heating, any of, any of those kinds of things, you know, and you need help with those, reach out to us and we'll, we can try and point you in a, in a direction of somebody that we know is out Yep. Trying to take care of people.

Yep.

You know, and, and, and the people, the people that the Homeowners Show, uh, you know, connects with and networks with, these aren't people looking to take advantage. They really wanna help people and, and help keep their homes protected, help keep them protected and keep them safe and warm, uh, and, and, and make it through this.

Yeah. Um, so for sure.

But let us know if we can, if we can do anything to, to help anybody out there that's, that, uh, is listening to this, you know, unless it's, you know, you're listening to this next Tuesday. when it's probably not as relevant.

No.

But you might still need some plumbing help or something like that because something happened to your house. If you do, feel free to reach out. We can connect you with— even if you're not in the Houston area, we have connections in other cities now where people need a good plumber or need a good AC repairman or whatever it is. Let us know and we'll do everything we can to help you find a good one.

Yeah. And not only that, even if we're— we don't have a connection in your city, we can probably help you determine what to look for.

Yeah.

And what to guard against.

For sure.

You know, again, that's kind of what we try to do here.

Yeah.

Help people know what to guard against and what to— how to find the right people to do the jobs you just can't do or don't want to do.

Yeah.

So, but yeah, I, I, you know, This is, uh, it's a crazy couple of days, and I don't think it's gonna get better over the next couple of days. I'm getting texts even as we, uh, as we are putting this out that my family, the school's being canceled, and not just for the students, for teachers, no remote learning. And that's one of the things that we've, that we've been— we found out in 2020 is we can do remote learning these days.

Yeah.

You know, we, we have the capability of doing that, and that way we don't have to extend the school year and those sorts of things, but when people don't have power, they can't work and they can't get on the computer and do schoolwork or homework or anything like that. So, um, I just don't— I think that this is going to be a through the end of the week type of thing. And, uh, some of you need to just kind of hang out in there and, uh, you know, do the best you can. If we can help, let us know. Um, I, I will say this, uh, our buddy Jason just just posted on Facebook, um, that he's

52 years old and this, uh, is the most snow or ice he's ever seen in the Houston area. Uh, he vaguely remembers 1973 being pretty heavy. Um, but I think that the research that I've seen, Jason, is that, um, like 1855, there was a recorded on Valentine's Day 20 inches of snow here in Houston.

Yeah, that's crazy.

I know. Insane. So, but who knows, knowing this area, that could have been here for 36 hours and gone, you know. This is gonna stick around for a little while. Yeah, so for sure. Well, uh, anything else, Greg?

No, I mean, just like if you, you know, if you do need somebody to come out and work on your home, you know, while it does seem, you know, pertinent to you and important to you, and it is, have some patience.

Yes.

Because these, these guys are out there and they, they can, they can only do so much in a day.

Yeah.

And they're gonna try and, you know, I know, I, I know these guys are out there busting it right now, and, but they can't get to everybody.

Right. And, you know, we've talked about this before, do your best to diagnose the situation. And, you know, some of these guys will, can do a FaceTime If you can send them a text with a picture, um, or, or a short video of what you're looking at.

Yeah.

That will help them be able to have the tools and the parts on their truck to be able to fix the situation. So there's some things you can kind of do in advance to go, look, whenever you get here, I can give you an idea of what you need so you don't have to leave and then come back. That's gonna do a couple of things. It's gonna change your time and it's gonna change their time to be able to get to somebody else. So help out the best you can.

Yep.

So, well, listen, um, thanks for, uh, for downloading today's episode. Those of you who are listening on Facebook, thank you. This is actually episode 129. I wrote 128 on Facebook because I'm a dummy. And, uh, but yeah, thanks for downloading the episode. If you haven't already, please, uh, like and subscribe, do all those things. Leave us a rating review on iTunes. That'd be super, super helpful for us. us. We enjoy putting this content out and we do it for you guys, so we hope you enjoy it. But yeah, until next time, be safe out there and stay warm. See you later! See ya!