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 system. His goal is to provide answers that suit the specific lifestyle wherever someone lives in Arizona.
QUESTION: I have been replacing the four-foot-long fluorescent light bulbs in three fixtures in my garage much more often than I think I should have to do. Is it because something’s wrong with the bulbs; is it due to a bad ballast; is it due to a power surge in my area?
A: It could be all of the reasons you mentioned. You need to do a test. Go to a quality retailer and pick up new bulbs for all the fixtures and replace them. Write down the date you did it and document the dates when they wear out. Once you’ve seen how long they really last, you’ll be able to determine which fixture has a problem. A good electrician can check the condition of the ballasts to see if they need to be replaced. You might want to convert those clumsy fixtures to can lights that will use LED bulbs.
Q: My wife and I put in a backup offer on a home we’d really like to buy. But it’s going to be 60 days until the new offer closes or expires. Can we go out in the meantime and put in an offer on another house we want? Or should we just wait to see what happens with the first house?
A: You can make another offer as long as you put a contingency into the second offer that says you will not buy the second house if the offer on the first house is accepted. The current market is heating up, but it’s not that hot yet. You are in the driver’s seat. So don’t be bashful about putting contingencies into your offer.
Q: I have two bathrooms that are located back to back in my house. The sink in one bathroom doesn’t have an overflow vent and now I’m starting to get a sewer smell that seems to be coming back up the drain pipe. How do I get rid of that?
A: If you notice the odor in one bathroom and not the other, the issue could be in the drain line of the problem bath. Try removing the P-trap and clean it out thoroughly with a bleach solution. Make sure that there is always water in the trap if one sink is used less than the other. The water in the trap keeps the sewer smell from coming into your home. Another possibility is to slightly lengthen the height of the bathroom vent on top of the house.
Q: Nine years ago, I had a palo verde come down in my yard during a storm. I cut it down to a stump and replanted with a palo brea tree a few feet away from the stump. Now some sprouts have shot up out of the stump and they are already 8 feet tall. Do I have to take out the stump in order to keep the old tree from interfering with the growth of the new tree?
A: You probably do need to remove the stump to keep the old tree from interfering with the growth of your new tree. The underground root stock of the old tree is probably more developed than that of the new tree. Another alternative is to let the two trees grow up together and have them form a blended canopy. You’ll have to decide if you would like how that would look. They will both be competing for sunlight and they probably won’t grow up in a very upright fashion.
