Each year, thousands of Arizona residents email or call Rosie Romero’s radio show with questions about everything from preventing fires in their chimneys to getting rid of tree roots invading their sewer systems. His goal is to provide answers that suit the specific lifestyle wherever someone lives in Arizona.
QUESTION: I keep seeing someone on YouTube who recommends buying a mister that you can install over your air-conditioning unit outside. Is that a good idea or a bad idea to try?
ANSWER: I have seen those segments as well; it’s a hood with a mister inside. I guess the theory is that you can lower the ambient temperature around the unit and therefore the air conditioner will have less work to do. But I don’t think that introducing more humidity to the air taken into your system will actually succeed in lowering your air-conditioning costs. I would not install one of those hoods over my compressor. I love misters in the backyard, but not on top of my compressor.
Q: I have a pocket door between my kitchen and dining room that I would like to remove so that I can widen the doorway between the two rooms. Is it hard to take out that door yourself? I can’t move the door anymore because it’s off the track anyway. So how do I get started?
A: In order to get the door out, you need to remove the casing off the doorway by prying it off the wall. Once you can get that done, you can pull the pocket door out. But that job will take two people. In order to widen the opening, you need to take off the sheetrock to remove the pocket itself. At that point, you can start framing the new doorway.
Q: I had damage to my grapefruit and orange trees during the monsoon season. When the storms took place I had flowers on these two trees and they were blown off. But now the orange tree has little oranges on it. What can I do to help the fruit along?
A: Your trees probably shouldn’t have had flowers at the time of year when the storms came along. So it’s hard to know what will happen next. You need to put fertilizer on your trees to help them recover from the stress. It’s about the right time for your annual Labor Day fertilizing to take place. Then fertilize again around the time of Valentine’s Day and Memorial Day. Water first and then use a dry fertilizer and then water again. Do it right around the area of the end of the tree’s canopy and a third of the way back to the trunk.
Q: I had a flower bed but I stopped planting in it because I had some kind of grass that keeps coming back all the time. I cleared the grass out and then it started springing up again. The weed killer I’ve applied didn’t work. So I’ve been digging the grass areas out piece by piece. How can I get rid of it so I can plant flowers again?
A: You need to take some samples of the grass to a nursery so that someone can identify what type of grass you have and can get you something that will help. Once you apply a compound, you don’t want to plant anything in the bed for a while. It sounds like you might have Bermuda grass, but it could be nutgrass. There are chemicals that you can use, but it might take a couple of years for you to kill all of the grass roots and get rid of the problem.
