You might think YouTube is an oasis of helpful home improvement videos. After all, anyone with a smartphone can upload a video in seconds. Every week I look for videos that can help you save time and money. With each passing day, I become more convinced that the platform is a cesspool of bad advice. For every decent video with useful information, you'll find that 20-30 are created by idiots.
I would like to share some examples. There are a surprising number of videos showing you how to easily create concrete walkways, sidewalks, and door recesses. The unsuspecting people in the video buy bags of dry concrete mix from their local hardware store, lumberyard, or big box store.
Pour this dry concrete mixture into the formwork and drag the board over the formwork to smooth the top surface. Make fancy engravings and designs with the dried powder. Next, the surface of the powder is lightly misted to initiate the chemical hydration reaction. This reaction forms microscopic crystals that act like Velcro. These crystals, when completely coated with individual sand or stones, become the adhesive that holds the aggregate to the concrete.
After an hour or so, the uninformed video host begins filling the top with water. It begins to penetrate the dry powder just below the surface. My guess is that the host of the video has never taken a geology course. The heavy water grabs the ultra-fine cement powder and begins carrying it into the mix.
Have you ever seen what happens in a rainstorm that falls on dry, dusty soil? Large amounts of rainwater trap ultra-fine silt and begin to move it downward through the soil. This is why stream water becomes cloudy right after a storm. If you go to the stream a few hours after a storm, the water is magically clear.
please think about it. How do you know if you've added enough water to your concrete mix? How do you know if you've added too much? How strong is the concrete just below the surface where most or all of the cement powder has been carried away by the water? Or?
I'm currently working with the Portland Cement Association and their scientists to prove that this method of pouring concrete is probably the worst method. Mix the concrete with the right amount of water in the traditional way and coat the sand and stones with cement paste. This is definitely the best way to pour concrete.
Perhaps the worst video is one that explains how to build thick timber frame walls when adding on to a house or room. Many people say he's a 2×6 wall and recommend building two 2×4 walls about 1 inch apart. These super insulated walls should save you a lot of money on heating costs. None of the videos I watched bothered to do the math for me.
If you follow the advice in these videos without doing the math, you're in for a big surprise. It's all about repayment. When you spend money on something that promises to lower your energy bills, you need to determine how many months or years it will take you to recoup the extra cost you paid upfront for that improvement in fuel savings. Only when you get all this money back will you finally start saving money.
I decided to calculate this double wall construction method. His two-story house in my imagination was 50 feet wide and 26 feet deep. Both floors had standard 8-foot ceilings.
By my count, 228 additional 2 x 4 studs, 40 2 x 4 x 16's for the top and bottom panels of the additional walls, clear pine for window and door extension frames, and 6-in. It turns out that you will need 50 rolls of fiberglass. The total cost of these materials in 2024 was $6,125 before sales tax.
It's safe to say that the additional labor, overhead, and profit to install all of this will be approximately $10,000. The total additional cost for super-insulated exterior walls will be approximately $16,000.
Looking online, here are the average heating costs for homeowners in the U.S. in 2023: Natural gas costs $931, heating oil costs $2,354, and electricity costs $1,359.
Heat loss through windows, doors, attics, and floors will be the same. It just reduces heat loss through the walls. A projected savings of 20% would be large enough. That means you could save $186 a year by heating with natural gas, $420 by heating with oil, and $271 by heating with electricity. Air conditioning could save you an additional $150 a year.
It's your turn to do the rest of the calculations. Please tell me how many years it will take to break even. If you heat your home with natural gas, it will only take 86 years. Calculating your break-even point is further complicated by the interest and investment income you would have earned if you hadn't used the money. The bottom line is: Be careful what you watch on YouTube.
Tim Carter has been a home improvement professional for over 30 years. To submit a question or learn more, visit AsktheBuilder.com.