The Carolina Contractor Show
The Carolina Contractor Show
Contractor Q&A: Listener Questions
Sunlight changes everything. We kick off with a real project that turned a dim great room into a bright, open space by swapping a standard door for full glass, adding a 10-by-6 quad window, and installing an 8-by-12 slider with screens for a cross-breeze you can feel. The secret wasn’t just picking pretty glass—it was structural discipline. We brought in an engineer, sized LVLs correctly, and worked to the inch so the spans carried safely and cleanly.
From there, we pull the curtain back on builder grade versus custom grade. “Builder grade” isn’t a dirty word, but it can hide weak links like finger-jointed studs or MDF outside. We share the exact questions to ask about floor lumber grades, shingle brands, and warranties. On roofing, we compare standing seam metal with Kynar or Valspar finishes against exposed fastener panels that fade, and explain why today’s premium shingles deliver serious wind performance and algae protection for less money. Pro tip: never use button-cap fasteners under metal roofing underlayment unless you want the caps to telegraph through the panels.
If you’re hunting older homes, we offer a quick triage: read the foundation, then price the heavy hitters—electrical, HVAC, and insulation. For windows, don’t default to full replacements. Investigate sash swaps, reglazing, or sash kits that preserve frames and cut labor. On HVAC, we decode SEER and explain why the jump from 14 to 21 rarely pays for itself. Your smartest investment is the envelope: spray foam where it counts, diligent air sealing, and right-sized equipment. Mini splits shine in garages and bonus rooms, but only after you insulate.
We also touch on a rumored national housing emergency and what real relief might look like for first-time buyers. If you care about better light, stronger structure, and upgrades that actually return value, this one gives you a roadmap—without the hype. Enjoy the show, explore resources at thecarolinacontractor.com, and hit the Ask The Contractor button with your questions. If you learned something useful, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.
And welcome to another edition of the Carolina Contractor Show. My name's Eric Smith. Across from me, Joe Burrow. Nah, it's it's Donnie Blanchard, general contractor, uh, but he's kind of imitating uh uh Mr. Burrow with with an injury. But unlike him and his turf toe, you ain't stopping working, are you? I don't have a choice, man.
SPEAKER_00:I got cars, colleges, and weddings to pay for, so I'm still under contract for a lot of years. So no, sir. I uh braced it up, but yeah, that's the best I can do.
SPEAKER_01:Tell them succinctly what happened and and how you found out it was broken, because this is how guys do it.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't really know that it happened, but I just stepped off the side of a sidewalk and, you know, back in my younger days, would have just considered that a sprain. So I walked on it for a week and woke up last weekend and it was black and blue from my toe to halfway up my shin, and I thought maybe I should get this checked out. And of course, X-ray said it was in fact a break. Um, so yeah, I walked on a broken ankle for a week, and um they put me in a walking boot. That wasn't fun at all. And gosh, I'm saying this on the radio, that's not good. But I came out of the walking boot about a week too early, and I just got the highest ankle work boots I could I could find, and I laced them up as tight as I could stand, and I've been rolling with it, man.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not gonna use his name, but it we had a contractor walk in one time and he he was limping pretty hard, and uh he had self-wrapped with duct tape, and we said, dude, what happened? He says, I I fell off the roof. And I'm like, maybe you should go see somebody. He says, Nah, I've I've taken care of myself, ordered material and walked back out the store. And I'm like, Yeah, I'd like to say that that's dumb, but I'd probably, you know, try to walk everything off regardless of age.
SPEAKER_00:My sweetheart told me how tough I was. She said, Oh my gosh, you you must be the toughest man ever, but you better go see a doctor. So I knew I was gonna be in trouble with her, and I just I just did it, made it official, and it was good to know, I guess, in the big picture. So, but uh the good news is it's doing a lot better. And I drove a bobcat yesterday, and I have the the foot controls on my bobcat. So all that went really smooth, kind of like still got it status there. And um, after that I knew I was over the worst part.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, uh, if you're uh not familiar with our show, the Carolina Contractor Show, great place to start is theCarolinacontractor.com. That's our website. We got a bunch of information on there. We're also up on YouTube so you can see past shows, and we've got some uh shorter episodes up there, questions, and and we'll get into that in a little bit. Uh also check us out on IG. We were on several radio stations across the Carolinas and of course podcasts. So if you go to that same website, you can look at the literally hundreds of shows we've done. They're labeled by subject, and you can download it that way. Or if you just want to see what was the most recent shows we've done and listen to those and check us out. Again, you can find it all at the Carolinacontractor.com. And another thing we have, grief, Donnie, I forgot about this because this pertains to today's episode, and that is going to be having a question, whether it's about the show, about your house, about something we talk about. There's an ask the contractor button. How long have you been a GC, Donnie? I got my license in 2008. 17 years at GC. So when you send a question through the Carolina contractor show, it goes to Donnie and he gives you some answers, emails you back. We talk about them sometimes, and we're gonna talk a little bit about uh questions that people ask us, not necessarily only from the website today, but some that we hear when we're on the uh uh job site. As we like to say, the show is from the job site to the studio mic. We're just talking about what we do for a living. I sell building materials, Donnie uses them to build things with. And speaking of which, Donnie, you sent me some pictures. We got to get this up on the IG. It sounds like it's beer, but I'm a big fan of natural light coming into a house. I actually prefer it over uh standard lighting if I can. And then you showed me a house that you did work on that was absolutely amazing how you improved it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, yeah, I don't want to pat myself on the back, but I went pretty bold on this one, and and basically every suggestion that I had ended up working out really well. And uh, met this really nice couple, and they had a beautiful home uh that bordered Chapel Hill, kind of on the Hillsborough side. So I go to the house and I could tell it was fairly new, and I couldn't imagine what they would want to change about it. So uh that being said, I walked through the house and they expressed their problem with no natural light in the kitchen and living room area, and they have a combo great room that we talk about all the time where they both feed into one another. So they have a 10-foot ceiling, but they had standard doors at six foot eight. So uh a lot of people refer to that seven-foot doors. But uh the next option up, and what's commonly seen with a 10-foot ceiling, is an eight-foot door. So eight-foot doors aren't readily available at your at your big box stores or anything, but um, folks like you and I, or I know you guys can special order those and we can get those uh on demand. My suggestion was that we change out the walk door to the screen porch to an eight-foot door, full glass, and then to the left of that, we did a series of windows. So we did a quad uh of double-hung windows that matched all their existing windows, but it's 10 foot wide by six foot tall. And the reason I only went six foot tall is because you know, if you go any closer to the floor, you have to have tempered glass, and I didn't want them to get into that expense. So I went just low enough where no tempered glass was needed, and then moved to the right, which was basically the kitchen dining area combo. We put an eight foot tall by twelve foot wide slider, so it's a sliding door. And being that it was you know 12 foot wide, there was four three-foot panels, and the center, the two center panels are the operable ones that you know slide out to the flankers. And uh, one of the questions that the homeowner asked me, which that I give them all the credit for this, but do they have screens? So I made sure that they did, and of course, the screens uh close you can open the two middle doors wide open, and you've got a six-foot opening that you can close the screens on. So really neat for uh airflow, basically creates a little wind tunnel if you open up the windows on the other side of the house. And then the original goal was to get more natural light in, and man, it really did that. I mean, there's barely any wood wall that you see. Uh side note there, if anybody wants to tackle something like this, the first step is to contact a structural engineer. So I had somebody come out and explain, you know, the spans and my intentions with the uh materials that I just mentioned, and he spec'd out uh a plan with LVLs that would span both uh distances, and man, it it all worked out like a dream. But when we got those big doors and windows on site, I started pulling tape immediately. I was kind of in freakout mode because it didn't look like it was gonna work. And and I'll say this, it it came down to the inch in a couple of those uh scenarios. So we really did our thing, and you know, experience matters, but uh I'll I'll be fully transparent. There was some guesswork involved there. What were your uh LVL widths? The wider width was a 11 and 7 eighths, and then the uh I'm sorry, that was the shorter uh span, but the wider span that had the 10-foot quad window plus the walk door uh ended up being a 14-inch LVL. So uh with a 10-foot ceiling, they both made that no problem.
SPEAKER_01:People might now listen to the show, look at their house and go, man, I'd love to put a couple more windows or replace these singles with doubles.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You need to have an engineer because there's more going on on your house than you you might realize. But if it works, or as you said, put in some LVLs and work the spans and everything, you can really add a lot of windows to a wall or to a section. And good work. I think it was beautiful. It made me excited.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I appreciate it. I was super proud of it, and I think the biggest thing that that mattered the most is that the the homeowners were just wonderful people. And when you go in and you kick some rear end for somebody and do a great job, and they never cease to tell you how pleased they are. That's a that's a that's part of the relationship. We have a group text going, and you know, every step of the way they have uh have not ceased to tell me how pleased they are with it with every little thing, and and from my end, that feels good, man.
SPEAKER_01:It's uh something we'll look forward to. Some pictures popping up on the social media. Another thing I want to hit real quick before we jump into the meat of the show was uh you pointed out there's a rumor of Trump declaring a housing emergency. We know getting housing, affordable housing, is very difficult. And there's talk about it happening this fall, and I want to touch on that real quick. Um, people say, what can the president do? And technically, he can declare a national housing emergency for almost any reason he sees fit. It's uh under a 1976 National Emergencies Act. And the act doesn't necessarily say for certain what constitutes an emergency, but it does allow him to bypass Congress and take some various actions. And he's done this with um declaring emergencies on immigration and crime and foreign trade. So he kind of just might go out there and say, we have a housing emergency. Now I want to do this, this, this, and this to alleviate it. I think he's being genuine. He wants to make an effort to somehow help the housing problem.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and after we did the show on the Big Beautiful bill, I'd have to admit I was sort of disappointed because my personal situation is that I've got two young folks that are very close to me and the family that I'm gonna be building a house for to make them first-time homeowners and there was no incentives in the Big Beautiful bill. But I'm I'm hoping that they were thinking forward and knew that this would be an option if the interest rates didn't, in fact, drop like they predicted. So uh really, really pleased to hear that with the uh housing emergency because we need some relief. We need we need the price of these houses to come down. You know, the affordability is is a real thing. And what 22-year-old, uh, even 24, 25-year-old, would you recommend go get a half million dollar home loan and be house poor for the next two decades of their life until they figure it out? I think it impacts their ability to have children and just be happy. You know, who wants to be in debt like that? And and um I'm hoping that that this is isn't just a maybe. I hope this is something that they follow up on and make it happen.
SPEAKER_01:And there'll be another protest march about it. I mean, can you just imagine people in the streets, no cheap housing, no affordable housing, this president's horrible. I mean, all the things that they've been wanting are now coming, but because yeah, he's doing it, they're gonna protest against it in some way. We thought it was a joke, but let's be honest. If he found the cure for cancer, there'll be people that would reject it just because of the messenger. Yeah, maybe TDS is a real thing, E. So we're gonna do some questions today. I'm gonna kind of pick your brain. Some of them are from people that walk into my store and ask me about something, materials or a way to do something. And I kind of just rolled them around my head. Well, maybe I'll ask these questions on the show so thousands of people can hear them all at once. So this will require you to think on your feet some. Are you ready? I think so. All right. Uh, one thing I get is people asking me what's the difference between builder grade and custom grade materials, and when is it worth to upgrade to those? Builder grade doesn't mean cheap material, it means maybe generic material. It builds the house, the framing, the uh sheathing, the the roofing, those things. Uh custom is, you know, you have gnomes in Norway that are hand-carving rails and you want to pay extra for them. I tend to deal more with the builder grade material because we're dealing with builders more. You do some custom work, so you probably I guess deal more with those custom grade materials.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think there's a sweet side sweet spot between both. Of course, you don't want to spend that you know, the hand-carved gnome, whatever you just said, you don't want to spend money on that kind of trim. Um keep lure out. Yeah, there you go. But um, I think a a better term would be track builder grade. And you know, the track builders obviously have to buy from someone who can accommodate uh the the volume that they crank out. So uh they're gonna be buying from different supply houses than maybe I would. And the right questions to ask from a homeowner standpoint is you know, what grade of lumber do you use in your floor system? And uh, for instance, the people I buy from only have number one grade two by tens for the floor, and for the framer for the the end result for the homeowner, that just seems to be a better approach, and they do cost more, but if there's certain things you don't want to skimp on, it's your floor system. So uh I would say that from a shingle standpoint, you know, there's certain suppliers that carry certain manufacturers, and that's just about who made a contract with who. And um, you know, in our world, GAF and Certain Teet are the Coke and the Pepsi of of the roofing industry. So they both have their kings on the warranty, they they have better uh algae deterrent warranties, they just have better wind ratings, you know, all the way around, they're superior to the competition. So that's probably a homeowner homework assignment to know the right questions to ask. But yeah, I I don't think that that you're gonna go inferior. I I won't call them out by name, but there's a couple of local suppliers, and you know, if I have my way about it, if I need a few two by eights, I know that I've got to go through there and I've got to cull through the materials and I have to pick out the straight ones, and you really got to take a look. But that's why I'd rather pay a little bit extra, get number one grade material, especially for a floor system, and just call it a day. And uh one thing that I picked up on, I was a 21-year-old when I did my internship, so I really didn't know much about anything at that point. I was book smart with construction. I knew foundations through working for my dad, but that's what my beginning was um this this internship with a track builder, and they were vertically integrated, meaning that they had their own carpet manufacturers, they had their own lumber yards, and they would produce these things, get an engineer stamp on it, and of course they were saving bucko's of money, but um their studs, for instance, that went in their walls were finger jointed. So they had different pieces of wood that were ran through a machine, finger jointed all together. And you know, for a um for a vertical pressure test from an engineer, it stood up to what it was supposed to, but you could take your hand and uh to give you a visual, you could karate chop that thing in half with minimal effort. So uh once it was all inside the wall, that's probably never gonna happen. But the carpet, we had a terrible time with problems with the carpet. We were closing the houses, and come to find out, you know, they made their own carpet. So if you're gonna buy a track-built house, I would I would ask, and they have to disclose that information, is is hey, you know, what do you guys supply to yourself? You know, what what what business uh what trades or what uh materials come from you in-house?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we've had uh people talk about, hey, I pulled up sheathing that was just uh it wasn't treated or something that was exposed outdoors, trimming with MDF outdoors. Oh yeah, yeah, because you can paint it and no one knows the difference until it melts away. Um so it also is important to know who your contractor is and you get you hire a GC. People come into me all the time and say, Can you recommend a contractor? And I always say, I can give you some names. Uh I don't make any money off of it. There's no referral to it, but I can give you some names if people have a good reputation. Um then it's up to that buyer to do their homework and they need to make sure, hey, do you have we hear, make sure they're licensed and insured. Well, how do you find that? Is you being a general contractor, if I hire you, what can I do to to check on your qualifications and insurance, Donnie?
SPEAKER_00:Uh that's pretty easy. Uh you would go to NCLBGC, which is the North Carolina licensing board for general contractors.org or dot gov, I can't remember. I want to say it's ORG, but um, you can just search the name. It's it's very user-friendly. So you can find out if someone has a license or if they have an expired license uh within a minute. And then as far as the insurance part of that, um you you can always just ask and say, hey, can you have your insurance folks email me a copy of your workers' comp and your general liability insurance? That's a really straightforward question. Uh be leery if they give you that certificate themselves, because anybody can forge a certificate. There's crazy stuff out there online right now. So the safe bet is to have your agent email that over so you're not in between. And uh that that's that's a way to legitimize that certificate. And a lot of times that doesn't come into play until you actually choose the builder, and then the bank will do the rest. Assuming you're gonna have a mortgage and go through a bank, the bank will require all the right insurance forms and uh the other administrative things that they need to process the loan. So you usually don't have to ask that question if it's a reputable builder.
SPEAKER_01:But if you're not having a build, you're just having uh some general work done and you want to find out the bank's not gonna get involved, then yes, it is nclbgc.org. Org. And you go to that site and uh as you also said, call the insurance company uh directly.
SPEAKER_00:Or the polite way to ask is say have your agent email me your certificates. And uh that that's anybody who's legit is not gonna mind you saying that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, when you buy an older home, uh people wonder what's the first thing I should inspect or update. Inspect, well, if you're buying a home, you should have an inspector go through it and they should be able to tell you you know what needs attention. But um I guess when it comes to updating things in a house that you just bought, not a new build but an existing, again, that's gonna kind of fall on the inspector to say, hey, your HVAC system is great, your water heater's got some uh build-up around the connection points that needs to be changed, or you need to get a new roof. But I don't I don't know. Is there one thing people should do when they buy a house to check themselves to look for an update?
SPEAKER_00:Uh I would say it's three or four main things, and I'll try to make this quick. But when you approach the house, if the foundation looks lousy from the outside, that means that the inside's probably not much better. So if their foundation looks very, very outdated, you know, the the mortar seems to be chipped away and and um nothing looks level, then then that's probably a bad foundation for the piers and the supports that are that are in the crawl space. Uh the second thing that will burn you and the big ticket items are electrical, HVAC, and insulation. Most of these older homes are very poorly insulated, meaning that when you retrofit that insulation, it's not as straightforward as a square foot price. You know, there's different things like drill and fill, and uh underneath the house is pretty easy, and in the attic is pretty easy because all that seems to be accessible. But uh, you know, if the walls have no insulation, then you're you're looking at thousands of dollars there to retrofit um electrical. If it's outdated wiring, that's something that I would definitely lean on that home inspector to document. And then the HVAC system, you know, now with AI, you can go take a picture of the tag on the condenser unit, which is the big thing with the fan that's outside, and you can run that tag and it'll tell you the model, the the manufacturer, and the date that it was installed. So all that is uh is uh public information. So you you can find that out pretty easy. But those are the big things that are gonna burn you. Of course, the visual test on the roof, if it looks like it has uh seen its best days, then gonna be, you know, those are the things that when you get into this project or you buy an older home that you can plan on spending another$30,000 to$50,000,$60,000 on.
SPEAKER_01:Uh two things I'll add to that that popped in my head while you're talking. Number one, ask the previous owner if they by chance know who was servicing or taking care of those major things. Like, did you have an HVAC company that was checking every couple years? It might be worthwhile just to stick with them if they're familiar with it and any other maintenance programs that might come along with the house, even if you have to pay for it, like it's an annual bill. If somebody's familiar with it, especially if it was the installer of said equipment. Um number two on the roof, the reason a new roof uh is a big deal is because one, when you get insurance on your house, they will ask you how old is your roof, and then after you tell them how old it is, they usually have you sign an affidavit. So you need to tell the truth on that, and it is a great investment to get. Go ahead and have that roof done because it can also lower your uh premium, but keep you out of trouble because if your roof is 25 years old and you said it's five, they're gonna know if a tree falls through that your roof was uh a lot older than you said it was, and now you're in in jeopardy of getting your roof replaced uh with insurance money. It might have to be at your cost.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you don't want to open that can of worms. No.
SPEAKER_01:Uh speaking of roofs, we get a lot of people walk in asking about metal roofing material, and uh some of them are very familiar with it, they like it, they might be doing a repair uh or they're just adding something, a shed. But some people just straight up are like, um, hey, I I I seen this on TV, the stuff metal roofs. Uh, is it only for places at the coast and hurricanes and or can I just use it residentially? And I know you deal with it a lot too. What's your take on metal roofs?
SPEAKER_00:Uh well, before I get into the metal roofs, I'll get into the numbers. And metal has gone up by about 50% since the pandemic. So, what I can buy the metal for now, I used to be able to do labor and materials for. So it's expensive. And so if you're budget conscious, then I would probably just lean towards shingles from the get-go because you don't want to disappoint yourself. Um, that being said, the two main types that we deal with uh in a residential world are uh I'm gonna use a slang here is screw down and standing seam. Uh screw down is exposed fastener, meaning the screws are all on the outside, and standing seam is concealed fastener, meaning that the roof's installed with clips, the clips are under the panel, so uh nothing that that uh would be a screw would be uh exposed to the light of day. The standing seam is about four times more than the screwdown, and the standing seam has either a kinar or a valspar finish, and usually from the manufacturer they have a 40-year paint warranty on that, and everybody has 50 in their mind when they approach us about it, but it's really a 40-year warranty. Uh, it can last forever if you maintain it. So I will give it that endorsement, but it is quite a bit more. The screwdown has a siliconized polyester paint system on it, and that is only a 10-year paint warranty. So uh big, big difference between 10 and 40. And and I'll say this, it's it's guaranteed to fade. If you get red, it's gonna look pink in 10, 20 years. If you get black, it's gonna look gray in 10, 20 years. And um, and people say, Well, I just want a metal roof, and I'm like, well, let me explain the end game here. So um I I'm I I am a fan. I think that it's it's beautiful, but from a pricing standpoint, I usually recommend that people go with shingles. Our shingle roofs are you know 50 years non-prorated warranty, they're transferable, unlimited win rating, 25 year algae deterrent guarantee now. So shingles have come so far just in the last 10 to 15 years that they're hard to beat in terms of bang for the buck. But the happy medium for most homeowners that I work with is that we'll do metal accents along with a shingle roof on the main body of the roof, and that means, you know, water tables, returns, porches, things that are just short metal panels, but you still get the look of the metal, so you'll have the same color between the metal and the shingles, but just two different textures. Very good.
SPEAKER_01:And I get people coming in uh doing that, but um, they're not shocked necessarily at the price, but I think the install is what throws them off. It's not done the same way, and there's some planning you have to do to put a metal roof on a house. So if you don't have experience or you hire someone like Donnie to do it, it is more expensive. But I agree with you, it looks beautiful, especially for the first five to ten years.
SPEAKER_00:Big pointer here on metal roofs, if you hire somebody to do that, the main, main thing, and we work for all the contractors around town uh as a subcontractor for this, and the main thing I tell them is that when you install the underlayment, do not install the underlayment with button caps. That's the little plastic caps, either have a nail or a staple because those will show through. When you put that metal down and step back across that metal, it will leave an imprint from that plastic button cap. So you either have to install the underlayment with hand drive roofing tacks that have a flat head or just plain staples. And that's not as watertight as a button cap, but the end game is is very well worth it not to use those.
SPEAKER_01:Never even crossed my mind. And we sell button caps anywhere from uh the little box of a couple hundred to three thousand. And yeah, I never thought about that. Excellent, uh, excellent advice right there. Hey, uh people come in, ask me, hey, I I want to replace a window, maybe two, sometimes maybe three. The thing that can be shocking is if you want to replace all the windows in your house and upgrade them, walk through your house, even if it's mentally right now, and go, well, how many do I have? And all of a sudden you find out you're in the 20s without even trying, get all your windows at once or a few at a time. And I'm going on the basis that nothing is inherently wrong with any single window, not like a broken one. They're all basically good, but you can't afford to drop 25,000. So I just want to do my lower level of my house. Would you promote that or not?
SPEAKER_00:Uh, first thing to do is explore your options. Don't spend any money until you see what you can do versus a window replacement. You know, they make sash replacements. If you pull your double hung window in and look on the side of it, usually there's a manufacturer tag that's going to tell you exactly what size and who made it. And um, that's pretty easy fix if you just have a broken sash. You can swap that out, and a lot of those are under warranty if your home is newer. Um, the second thing is um you you can have it reglaze, meaning you can call a glass company, any glass company, they're all pretty uh well-versed on how to do this. So you can call them out, and it's a fraction of a replacement window just to have a couple of glass panes uh uh replaced there, and they can pop those out, put a new one in, and you'll never know what happened. They in some of our renovations and flip houses, we'll get a broken window once in a while, and that's definitely a much cheaper option than a whole replacement window. I know we've talked about this before, and you guys probably offer these, but sash replacement kits. So if you have a brick on the outside of your house and you just can't get that window out, you know, a sash replacement kit is incredibly efficient. They work very well, they're a fraction of the cost, and from an install standpoint, they take half the time.
SPEAKER_01:We definitely get a lot of calls. People break uh upper or lower sash and they ask us, can I do I have to replace the whole window? And we order them replacement sash. Warranties vary, but a lot of them are transferable too. So if somebody buys a house two years later, moves out, and then you notice a seal goes, if that's a warranty repair or you notice a defect. Sometimes it is just one of the sashes and you can uh have it taken care of. And a lot of sashes you can put in yourself. Oh, yeah. Yeah, why totally? Yeah, so uh do that. Now, we were talking about when you have your house inspected, things to look out for, maybe update or replace an HVAC. Uh, one question we get a lot is what is the most energy efficient HVAC system for homes, especially in the Carolinas? Uh uh the heat pump's a big thing, but I also hear people talk about the uh mini splits.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, gosh, I'll start with the heat pumps. The most efficient heat pump you can get has a SEER rating of a 21. And SEER is S-E-E-R. It means seasonal energy efficient rating. And um, I don't know how they come up with that number. I could probably figure it out, but I'll leave that up to the experts. And I do know that they overhauled the um the the way that they they came up with the SEER count about two years ago. So now the minimum SEER is a 14, and uh I was advised that what is a 14 sear now used to be a 15 sear, so that's they've they've tightened up on the regulations that dictate that number. Um I will say this. Do I think a R, I mean I'm sorry, do I think a 21 sear unit is worth the number? Because the price goes up by thousands. This isn't hundreds of dollars for an upgrade, it's thousands of dollars. And uh, does it work like it's supposed to, and is the payback there? I think that's a hard no. If you have a very well insulated house, that's the key to all your heating and air. And so you build a new home, you know, pay the extra for spray foam, uh, pay the extra for flashing bat. You want to use the low expansion spray foam around your doors and windows and just anything you can to keep the heat transfer down. And a 14 sear works just fine. We may bump up to a 15 sear, and that is, you know, hundreds instead of thousands to go up one point. But um I definitely think that if you had a$250 utility bill going all the way up from a 14 to a 21 sear is not going to drop your utility bill by$100 a month. It's gonna be more like$20,$30,$40, maybe, maybe if that. And um, and and when you project that out over the long haul of the lifespan of that heating and air unit, the payback just ain't there, man. What about on mini splits? What would be some applications you could use that for? So a mini split, uh, the easiest definition of that is it looks like a little hotel heating and air unit, but uh it's it's smaller than the ones in the hotel rooms. But mini splits don't turn corners. So it's basically it's called a ductless mini split. There's no ductwork coming off of that. And if you have a uh bonus room or a garage that you want to condition, they're wonderful, wonderful for that. They don't look the greatest, but they definitely work like they're supposed to. There's no ductwork for you to lose any of the heating and cooling, so they're incredibly efficient as well. And I want to say average cost of those is anywhere from five to six thousand dollars.
SPEAKER_01:And the number one thing people need to know if they have like a work shed and they said, Well, I'm gonna put one of those in my work shed, it's not gonna work well unless you have what? Insulation, my friend. Insulation. So if you've got like a little shop out back and you're you're thinking, I might put a sear in there, I mean a split in there, because that I could work out there in the winter and and have AC out there in the summer. If your insulation isn't in there, it's you're wasting your time and you're wasting your money. So get the insulation first. Matter of fact, if you have good insulation, uh a freaking electric heater sitting on a floor in one of those small like Leonard sheds will do just fine. Agreed. Yeah. Uh once again, me and Donnie have all these questions that come in and we order them up and we get ready to go through them, and then all of a sudden time runs out. So we only got through about half of these. But this isn't really a question show. We're just kind of shooting the bull. So next week we'll kind of do some of the same thing. We've got uh more subjects talk about. Uh, one of them I really want to get to is uh a lot of people, especially in the fall and in the spring, want to know what they can do to clean their duct work. So that's gonna be the cliffhanger. Um, and I know you know a lot about that, or know people who know a lot about that, Donnie. Yes, sir. That's a good one. We'll get to it next week. That that's a cliffhanger. That's who shot JR. We're gonna be talking about ducks instead of bullets and how to keep them clean. Again, website the Carolinacontractor.com, is where you can find more details about the show. Find us on YouTube. We upload videos on there, shows up there, and podcasts that you can download from the website. Also, we just want to thank everybody for tuning in and and and being interactive with us with these questions and stuff that me and Donnie see on the the job site, as said beginning the show. From the job site to the studio mic, we're just uh shooting the bull about construction and building and uh trying to give you some tips on maintaining your dwelling. And so we invite you to come back next week to a new episode of the Carolina Contractor Show. Thanks for the support. Everybody, love y'all.