SignalsAZ.com Prescott News Podcast - What Outdoor Upgrade Northern Arizona Homes Need Now

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

Send us a text and chime in!Karl Scheib shares how Exterior Solutions NAZ helps homeowners improve safety, reduce maintenance, and make outdoor spaces more comfortable year-round. The episode explores why gutter protection matters even in dry climates, how debris buildup can increase fire risk, and why ladder-related cleaning can be more dangerous than many people realize. Scheib also talks about retractable awnings and drop-down screens, and how they can make patios more usable through changing weather and seasons. It is a practical look at the simple upgrades that can make a big difference for northern Arizona homeowners.Check out the CAST11.com Website at: https://CAST11.com Follow the CAST11 Podcast Network on Facebook at: https://Facebook.com/CAST11AZFollow Cast11 Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/cast11_podcast_network

Everybody, welcome back to signalsazee.com, Signal News Podcast. I have Carl Shai. And you are the man, the myth, the legend behind everything gutter. I wear, you know, a Superman costume and most of the things that people see me in. And I've changed the logo on my chest. And I used to have, you know, gutter helmet man on the front. Now I have exterior solutions, NAZ, because I have these exterior solutions that I do. But I have done gutter covers and gutters for 27 years, two months, 16 days, and so many hours, whatever time this broadcast. So, yeah, a long time, a long time. And gutters and gutter protection is really important.

Well, I was, you know, we're talking about this could be a drier summer than we're used to, but we don't know. You never know with, you know, press kit. I don't install gutter covers for the rain. I install the gutter covers because stuff gets. It's in the gutters. And it usually doesn't go. And you need the gutters to work here when it rains no matter what. And it's going to rain.

It might just be a few times. But it's going to rain. I was more concerned about drier conditions this summer, possible. You know, I'm not a meteorologist or a fire person, but I got to assume if it's super dry, we could be looking at, you know, some fires. Best practice for your home in the forest. and I have evacuated. I lived in Evergreen, Colorado for five years of my 20 years in Colorado doing exactly what I do now.

And I evacuated five times in that five years. And I helped friends evacuate. And, you know, that fire danger is really big. And cleaning the gutters and, you know, preparing everything around the house. And here in Arizona, we have. Way fewer restrictions to where the trees can be around our house than Denver did. Oh. Oh, yeah.

I mean, in Coconino, I can have a tree growing right out of the house, right, a pine tree. And in Colorado, you have to have a perimeter to get a, you know, a certificate of occupancy for a house I bought in 2009. You had to have all the trees cut up. I mean, built a deck for a friend of mine. We didn't want to pull a permit because they were going to make us cut more trees down. So, you know, we have tons of trees, tons of what comes off of the trees, which is slash. And that burns. It's the fuel in the fire, in the forest is slash.

We figure whenever you are watching Survivor or any of these, I'm watching a show right now, extracted. But they're getting all the dry stuff. And that's how you, you're kindling, which is exactly what's sitting in our neighbors right now. As we, you know, go into the forest and we stop fires and we put houses there, we kind of stop the cleaning up of all of all the slash. And so there's more and more fuel. And that's why it's easier to get these big fires. But when you want to talk about best practice around your house, you're creating a defensible

space. You want to have, you know, a roof that's cleaned off from pine needles. You want to have gutters that. are clean, or you want to use a gutter protection device that doesn't pile everything up on top of it, which is one of the most popular devices that we have, which is a screen mesh likely filter. And they keep things out of the gutters, but things can sit on top of them. So for fire danger, we really want, you know, a gutter helmet product, which is what we call reverse curve, and it doesn't.

It carries water around it, and the debris will fall off of it. And, I mean, as I've done this for so long, the first time I saw legislation for a gutter protection device for fire danger was, of course, our good friends in California with regulations for a gutter protection device on your roof, you know, on your gutters. It was Northern California because, you know, if you just eliminate, just eliminating the pile of stuff in the gutter and having a little bit on top of the screen was better than having the gutters. full of what, you know, the bundle you're starting for your fire. Right. And so people will build houses with tile roofs or metal roofs in the, in the forest, you know, for fire danger. But if your gutters are full, the fire department won't even try to defend your home.

There's no fight. Yeah, because they, you can't, you can't defend something that's going to catch on fire from the roof behind you because you have the roof is covered with pine needs. needles. And you see the, you see, have you ever seen a sprinkler system for the roof? I haven't. Oh, yeah. You can install sprinkler systems for the roof so that you, you know, water down the house and you're, you're protecting your house from the fire. But you really, you know, if you have a forest fire, you kind of want your house to go. Because if everything burns on, down around it, takes about 10 years for it to be pretty again. So you're like, ah, it takes

the house. I already grabbed all the important stuff. I told you the first time I had a fire in Colorado, I called USAA and raised my house, my household, you know, property property insurance before. But as I'm evacuating my dad's precious guns and everything I could, everything, everything, the owner of the Shib family memorabilia for the last whatever. So I had to get all that out. Got a month's finger. Never burned.

But I did evacuate a friend of mine's house and they were out of town. And they gave us lists of stuff and we got grabbed all the stuff on the list. I'm looking at everybody. I'm like, well, everything else is free. You know, I mean. Take what you want, guys. Yeah. But the wind blows at too many doubled 50 miles an hour.

We had 50 mile an hour winds at my house on a Williamson Valley Ranch Road. We evacuated, it's got to be about 10 years now out in Antelope Meadows. And I watched the fire. Grass? Yeah. Yes, definitely. Yeah. And it was before a lot of those new houses and stuff were out there.

It was raining more then, too, and the grass was, you know, and I have, my house is off. I have like two acres between me and Williamson Valley Road, and I mow it because I don't want a lot of fuel out there for the chains or the cigarette butts that come out. Which is exactly what started that fire. A chain? The chains. And I watched the fire, like in a couple hours, it went, we're six miles off the road. So it went six miles past. And then I get the knock on the door.

And I was like, what the, no, we don't need to leave. the fire passed. And then she said, come here. And I looked out my front door. And it had flipped because the wind shifted. Sure. I was like, well, if it went in two hours, six miles, we're gone. Oh, gosh, the wind can go, in five minutes, they can go six miles on grass like that. You know, you had a 50 mile. Three years ago, I think we had a, you know, I had already moved here. They had a giant fire between Boulder and Denver. It was, it set a precedent for how much could burn, You know, but, you know, we have a lot of problems with urban fire now, too. Yeah, I mean, I'm on FireW. I go to the FireWise meetings.

They're on Thursdays here in Prescott. And, you know, the city, you know, in town is, you know, the fire could spread very easily. You know, we have, it's so built up. There's so much. And, you know, there's, it's, it's really easy. So fire is a really big issue. But for gutter protection, as much as fire has been, you know, an extra reason to get a gutter helmet-like product, it's always safety for the homeowner. And, you know, the wife is worried that, you know, she kept this guy alive and retired.

And now he's going to fall off the roof cleaning the gut. So the first year I opened my own business, it was a month before 9-11. in Denver. And Max McGee, and you're way too young to know who, he was one of the first Packers on Super Bowl 1. And it was in all the newspapers. And the newspaper is this thing that they send to your house and you open it up and you read it. I've never. And it was all over.

The olden days. Olden days. And it was all over the papers. And his wife said to him, I told them not to climb up and clean the gutters. We showed that article to people for a decade. Yeah, we did the permanent lighting because, you know, my husband pulling out. Yeah, he was pulling out the ladder every year. And finally I was like, I love the lights, but so afraid.

Lasers, you can get lasers and shoot it at the house. That's what I do. And I gave them away for Christmas, you know, as a bonus for your gutter protection purchase. Yeah, here's a laser. It's like, you know, you aim it at the house and you have all these different patterns that you can do. But at Christmas, at Christmas when you're at, different Christmas parties. If somebody has two broken wrists or just one, it was either cleaning the gutters or

putting the Christmas lights on. You'll hear it on the radio. You know, hey, be careful putting your Christmas lights on. I mean, I think some of the youngest people who have ever bought gutter covers from me worked in ERs. And I'd be like, why are you buying this from me? And she said, I work in an ER. You wouldn't believe how many people I have seen.

Say no more. And I'll be in a house and people will say, oh, well, we've got a. rule that it's only two steps up on a ladder. I go, well, you know, statistically, it's the two steps that gets everybody because they think they're safe and they fall. And when they fall in the house, the biggest thing that is you can't get back in. You know, you're too injured. You can't get back into your house. My wife's a social worker. And it was always, you know, what conditions do they have to make the house in order for you to go back? And, you know, they always want to go back to the house. but you know, you get that injured and fall off a couple-story roof cleaning the gutter.

The debt, there was a, in Chicago, we lost the gutter helmet dealer there 20 years ago. He was in his 70s. He'd owned a roofing company for 50 years. Oh, gosh. Fell off the roof and died. It was, I mean, a man so qualified. I have gutter helmet on David, Daniel, like, David, like. He was the fire chief for Prescott. And he said, well, I was a fireman, so I know better than to climb on a ladder.

And as a fireman, my knees are too bad to climb on a ladder. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, climbing on the ladder is the most dangerous thing you can do in the house. And gutter protection is one of the best things to create a maintenance-free exterior. And there's a lot of value in a really good gutter protection device where, you know, you're doing things to the house. to make, you know, everything right. And if you put this gutter protection device on,

so they remove the maintenance from it completely forever, because our warranties are forever. They're on the house. So it's transferable and they never ever clogged. Why shouldn't they, why shouldn't they be transferable? They never ever clog. And it's unless you break it. And then I'll just charge you to fix the piece and then it won't ever clog again.

So when I, whenever I see a house for sale that's got, um, got her helmet on. And it always lists it because it's a feature that sets them apart from the other house. Hey, we've got, you know, gutters that never clog. For the lifetime. Forever. So if you're buying a house and you're thinking, oh, I want to do this, that's a good selling. In Denver, I bought a house in Denver.

And he was an old naval officer in school principal. The house was immaculate. And when I got there, he had, you know, I'd sold him gutter helmet. And I'm like, he had everything perfect in this house. and had gutter helmet on it. And so it's a symptom of people who take care of the house. Rarely do I get there and they don't clean the gutters because it's important to people who take care of their most valuable investment, which is their house.

And you know, gutter protection can look really good. I have a stone-coated gutter helmet that I have on my house. And it, and they, it's, so here we don't see a lot of stone-coated roofs, but we stone-coat metal roofing for, you know, the replacement of of shake shingles because you can't put a tile up. And it's gorgeous. And it looks just like the shingles. It matches the shingles. And I have five different gutter covers. I'm looking around. You've got, and a great website, too. So, okay, so we know we've got to have great gutters, protection, fires, water. What else? You've got awnings, screens. Yeah. Gutter helmets, manufacturer.

is Gibraltar. They're a giant home improvement company, and they purchased Senesta awnings 25 years ago, and we started installing awnings. And I had this business in Denver, and I sold it successfully in 2018 and moved to Prescott. Nice. I'm very happy about it. And they took on Sanesta awnings. and both gutter helmet and Sienesta are celebrating 45 years. And you know what that means? I get to change the logo on every shirt, every hat, every single piece of paper.

You wait another year, you just put almost 40 or almost 50. Almost 50, yeah. So your screens, you've got the retractable ones, right? So there's tons of different shade options. I mean, and for the first decade. it was all a retractable awning. Retractable awning. Now it's these drop-down screens,

and you can put them all around your patio, and you can put them on one side, and that usually is the west side or south. Or you can put them on all the sides, and you can close in the patio and kind of make it like an opening-closing Arizona room. Yep. And the screens will filter as much as 95% of the UV rays,

so makes it super cool. compared to sitting in the sun, the privacy of it. If you have a hot tub and you don't want the neighbors watching in the hot tub, we put one of these screens up. It's only going to happen once, I tell you. And you, yep, and you get that. But these drop-down screens are so popular because we get to use, especially here in Prescott. Our weather is so fantastic. I mean, it's not that cold in the winter.

So people put down the screens so that it blocks the wind and they put a little heater on their patio and they use the patios all winter. And in the summer, they put the screens down because it's so hot. And, you know, you can use it a lot more. And where do we put the drop down screens? You know, we put them to stop that morning sun. We put them up to stop the evening sun. We put them up to stop the sun as it's going across the sky. And, you know, when I get out and I'm meeting people and I'm trying to make, you know,

the best shade decision for them because I am cheap and I will, I mean, and I think you should get a lot for your money. And we can talk about that because I'm putting prices and things and I think it's revolutionary. But when I go out to their house and they just moved in, I'm really, really cautious because they have gotten to see the earth move and the sun, you know, change where it's coming. And, you know, we really need to make good decisions. So we get good value. Um, and we put shade where we need it. So, for example, I put four shades on someone's house. And then over in December, we had to put the last one in. And in December, the sun was shining off that metal roof of their neighbor's house right into their patio. Oh, no, I don't think it was the metal roof. I think they couldn't see the

TV and football. Football. So I put all these screens down around the patio and you can watch the TV better. We go through that right now. And we have screens on our patio, but it's just regular screen that, you know, I took screens off on my west facing patio and that would just blow in the wind. And now I have screens that I can leave up. And, you know, I have screens that can go up to 130 miles an hour for wind gusts.

And that's what they're rated. But when you're building these screens, it's by how big they get. Right. So if you build a 10 foot wide one, that's really heavy duty. And we don't have to put up like as heavy as the super duper screen, the super duty. And but if we're building one less than 20, you know, we get this, we get a lot of this 50 to 100 mile an hour rating. I mean, uh, yesterday or Sunday. It was really windy.

I went to the gun show. I left all my shades down because I don't care. Because they're rated 50 to 100 miles an hour. And it wasn't good. There was nobody on the news saying we were going to, and that's about the wind that. We're not going to have a hurricane. No, but when I had, we had 49 mile an hour winds at my house recently. And I put them up for that.

What if something's flying in the wind with my, it gets my screen. A trampoline. Yeah. Trampolines and we lost ours. And we had it down. Yeah, we had it bolted down or whatever the. I always see that on videos. The trampoline.

When the neighbor's house. We didn't even see it. It was so bad last year. There was a big monsoon. You couldn't see, you know, this far in front of your face. And everything clears up. Part of my neighbor's roof is gone. And I'm like, where's the trampoline?

And we had it bolted down. We had it like whatever you do. But it's a big sale. Yeah. I mean, that's a big, big piece of fabric. Luckily, our neighbors had just built their house and it hit the fence before it got into their yard. And it just, it just bended into this little. So I'm old enough to remember when trampolines were really dangerous.

They had jagged edges. And it was a Darwin moment if you were living through the, you know, the trample. We're going over to the trampoline. All right. There was no 911 to call. You had to run to the neighbor's house. You know, calling ambulance. You know, cousin Becky fell on the trampoline.

Or the stinking bounce houses. It's like, oh, yeah. Bounce houses blow away too. But, you know, the wind was big. It was really big deal in Colorado just like it is here. And when I get out to somebody's house and we're talking about screens, we're usually talking about where the sun is. We're talking about the wind.

And I'm doing one at the top of this mountain right now where we're adding four more screens to the patio. And we stopped. And, you know, we really made this alcove like an L shape and it's west facing. And we really felt like we changed the whole wind pattern already. So we're just going to put those in before we start filling other 20 foot openings going around this patio. And, you know, one of the most important things was, you know, they bought the house for the view. And, you know, the screens you can see through them and you get to still see the view.

And you get to use it when it's sunny. And you get to use it when it's really windy. and I put them down around the barbecue, you know, so that we could use the barbecue. I have this beautiful awning at the base of Granite Mountain, and we put it as a retractable awning, and it goes over the guy's barbecue. And I'm like, man, I want to be here. I want to be that guy. Base of Granite Mountain.

I'm like, God, God, there's only one house between you and Granite Mountain. He goes, oh, that's my horse barn. You know, there's no house between me and Granite Mountain. I want to be that guy. Yeah. Well, and I got to figure, I mean, here. Here. That's like, that's his name. Corroti. Here, it's, the weather is always so great. I mean, sometimes a little warm, sometimes a little cool.

But to be able to enjoy the outdoors because so many times, like last night we wanted to go out, we were making fajitas. I want to sit down on the patio, too windy in the front. We go into the back patio and the sun is just coming down. And it's like, well, I needed to call. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I, I can spend more time outside. here in Prescott, you know, all year. I mean, and I think as the temperature drops in the evenings, you know, it is of all the places I've lived, you know, it's got the overall best weather, a little bit of season, you know, it's not Phoenix.

I mean, and it's not Denver. We're a mile high, but, you know, I really blame. I sold both my snowblowers when I moved from Colorado. I had one with tank tracks. and a little one. And that's why I didn't move to Flag. I really like Flag, but it would have been difficult for business because, you know, way more of my work is Prescott, the Verdi Valley, and Sedona.

But I mean, I have this app now. Everything's an app. And it plots all my installations. And when I go up to Flagstaff, I just open it and show it to them. And I mean, I have so many gutter helmets up there. I mean, all the wind. And, you know, and we have lots of pine needles. I mean, we do live in the, this, we have a pie.

We have the biggest national forest in the country. But I didn't buy my house in the forest. They get it. It made me too nervous. But I worry, I mean, I cut the grass because I'm worried about fire at my house, too. Yeah. All right, Carl, how do they get a hold of you if they want to just plan out how to make my house more, my outdoors more enjoyable?

I'd call. I'd call me. you know, 928, 318, 655, 318, 65, 55, 318, 65, 55. And you can text me. I used to think that that was so rude when texting came out. Now it's, I beg you to text me. And no one answers the phone, and I would recommend you not to answer the phone if you don't know who's calling, especially for seniors.

And I'd say, just don't answer the phone. They'll leave a message. But I will call people and they won't answer because it's a business. and they don't know and I text them and they call me back right away. I love it's Carl. So you can text me at 318, 65, 55, and I will call you back or my office will call you back. But most of the time, you know, I mean, I am always available and that's what you get. You know, when you buy, when you get something from a really good local business in Prescott, you get that owner who answers the phone and loves it. And, you know, we didn't,

talk about, you know, the evil giant in gutter protection who steals from people and it takes advantage of people and sells this plastic Chinese junk. And I mean, when you look up what people complain about, it's the after the fact. And, you know, if when it's after the fact and somebody's happy, they get me and they're not happy, they get me. And I tell them that. I'm like, listen, you can just call. And, you know, I'm 57. So you got about 10 more years. 10 more years. You'll see me at Walmart. You'll see me at Costco. Safe way mostly. Safeway in the morning. Yeah. There you go. So what website do you want them to look for? My exterior solutions, N-A-Z, exterior solutions, plural, naz.com. Yeah. And that's got all of them under it. You know, when I first got here, I had the rights to gutter helmet. Then I got the rights. I got the rights to the awnings. And then I just changed the name to exterior solutions, which was,

my roofing company in Colorado. I had a roofing company named Excero. But I named it NAZ here. Serious Solutions, NAZ. Makes sense. I'm old. It's easier for me to remember. You can't remember everything.

No. You kidding me? All right. We'll give him a call. 928, 318, 6555-5. I'm just going to text you later and just see what you're doing. Thank you. It was so fun.

Yeah. Thank you so much for coming in. He's got a free motor on outdoor shade products. I have 10% off too. 10% off for the winter. Wait. Is it spring? Spring now?

It's almost summer. Before summer. Yeah. That's what my ad says, 10%. Perfect. Right. Give Carl a call and we will see you next time. Thank you.