Let's Learn English! Topic: Fixing and Repairing Part 2 🧵🔧🧰 (Lesson Only)

Well hello and welcome to this English lesson about fixing and

repairing. Part two. I almost exactly a year ago I did a

lesson on fixing and repairing and because I had a little

mishap this week with my printer. Uh it reminded me of

that lesson. I looked it over and I quickly thought of a lot

of other things I could describe for you in English on

the subject of fixing and repairing. For those of you

that don't know my my printer broke. I let's see if we can

see it. It's actually sitting here. This is the broken

printer. Uh you can't see the new and it's actually sitting

over there. Um but I do actually have a new printer and

it works great. I printed a test page yesterday. But let's

do a lesson on fixing and repairing so that you can learn

some English. Here's how this lesson will work. I will

identify a problem. I will identify something that we're

all familiar with. That needs to be fixed or repaired or even

cleaned up a little bit. And then I will talk about how we

would do that in English. So you'll need to not only read

what I put on the screen. You'll need to listen to how I

describe it. So In this lesson I'll talk a lot about fixing

and repairing little things around the house. This isn't

about you know fixing your car necessarily. But more fixing

things like if there's a stain on your rug or something like

that. But you'll get you'll get the hint or you'll get the gist

of the lesson once I get started. So once again welcome

to this lesson on fixing and repairing. Part two. So again

I'm going to identify a problem and the problem here is a

wobbly table. When a table is wobbly when you sit at it it

moves. My desk is not wobbly. It's firmly standing on the

carpet and it doesn't wobble. But you might have a table

that's wobbly. The table might wobble. I'm saying the word

wobbly a lot because it's a fun word to say. Um if you have a

wobbly table you might do this. You might put a piece of

cardboard or folded paper underneath it. Um sometimes

when we're at a restaurant if the table's wobbly we might

stick something underneath to stop it. But our kitchen table

actually has adjustable feet on the bottom. So you can turn

them in and out and then you can adjust the table so it

doesn't wobble. Um and in an extreme circumstance you could

always cut three legs shorter so the table doesn't wobble.

But as you can see in this lesson I'm going to identify

something that needs to be fixed or repaired. And then I'm

going to talk about the ways I would fix or repair it. So

hopefully You can follow along and learn a bit of English. A

squeaky hinge. So sometimes when you open a door and close

a door it goes creek creek. You get you get sound effects in

this lesson today. So creek creek. Um and if this happens

usually what you'll do is you'll put a little bit of oil

on the hinge. So when you have a squeaky hinge you will

usually get a little bit of oil and you'll put that on the

hinge so that instead of going creek creek when you open and

close the door it's completely silent. So if you have a

squeaky hinge you put a little bit of oil on it. Sometimes

your printer doesn't work. Now my printer completely died. We

had a power outage. The power flickered one morning and I

think that kind of burnt out the electronics inside of it.

And that's a pretty bad problem I couldn't fix it. But

sometimes you just have a paper jam. The paper goes in the

printer and then it gets all crumpled up inside like this

piece of paper. In order to fix paper jam you usually open the

front of the printer you find the paper inside and you

carefully at slowly pull the paper out and then you close

the lid and you cross your fingers and hope the printer

works again. Um at work when the photocopier has a paper

jam. It actually tells you how to fix it on the screen. It

tells you what doors to open in order to fix the paper jam.

Never nice to have a paper jam when you're in a hurry. Uh

drafty door or window. So this is a bigger problem probably in

places where it's very cold in the winter. We sometimes have a

little draft that comes in by a window or door. A draft is cold

air from the outside in the winter that gets into your

house. So you might say oh my front entrance is very cold. I

have a drafty door. Or there's a drafty window in the kitchen.

The way you fix this is you buy something called weather seal

or weather stripping. So this man is putting some new weather

stripping on his door. This is kind of like a soft material so

when the door closes it blocks where the draft is coming in.

So again maybe not a problem if you live in a warmer part of

the world but in this part of the world sometimes you have a

draft and you need to fix it. Stained rug. So a stained rug

is not very nice if you drop your mug of tea or your cup of

tea on the floor or your coffee which is probably worse. It

might stain the rug if it's a very light coloured rug. Now if

you want to clean a stained rug you have a couple of choices.

If you remember from the lesson on cleaning you might get a

scrub brush or a brush and you might scrub the floor with soap

and water. But if you can't get the stain out you might rent a

carpet cleaner. A that you can use to clean your carpet. So

certainly if you spill coffee or tea you should immediately

scrub the floor with soap and water to try and get the stain

out of your rug. A clogged sink. So we haven't had this

very often but sometimes when you have a sink in your kitchen

or bathroom the water doesn't drain. You take the plug out or

you pull the little thing to let the water drain and the

just stays because the sink is clogged and we sometimes in

English say the sink is plugged. Um in that case you

might want to use a plunger this is called a plunger and

when you use a plunger it kind of puts pressure air pressure

into the sink and pushes the clog through. Uh or you might

want to use something called drain cleaner or draino is the

name we usually call it in English. It's also a brand

name. You might pour that in your sink and that might remove

the clog for you. You might also have a clogged toilet. We

also say a plug to toilet. Sometimes when you flush the

toilet the water doesn't go down and that's not good. In

this case your only solution is to get a plunger. So again this

is a plunger and you would use the plunger. You would plunge

the toilet. You would use the plunger in the toilet to try

and push the clog through the pipes. So that you can use the

toilet again as normal. Now here's a very common one. A

flat tire. I think there's only two car related fixes and

repairs that I'm going to talk about because they're the only

two that I know how to do myself. If you have a flat tire

the first thing you can try is to put air in the tire. You can

pump up the tire. That's how we would talk about it in English.

You would if you can still drive if the tire's not too

flat. You would find an air pump at a gas station and try

to pump up the tire. Maybe you have a pump at home and you can

try and pump up the tire. If that works that's awesome. If

it doesn't you will need to take the car to a garage. Or a

tire repair shop and they will fix the tire for you. So you

can always put air in yourself. But you usually if it goes flat

again after you pump it up you need to take your car to a

garage. And dead battery sorry there might be three car

related things. If you have a dead battery if it's because

you left your lights on or for another reason that you know

you caused it you can get someone to give you a boost.

You can see if someone has booster cables and they can

hook the cables up to their battery and hook the other end

up to your battery and then you can try and start your car. In

English we say this is getting a boost from someone or giving

someone a boost. Sometimes at work every year usually at

least once. A teacher will walk into the staff room and say

does anyone have booster cables? Um my car won't start.

Can you give me a boost? And then someone might say yes I

have cables. I'll help you. I'll give you a boost. Um but

sometimes you just need a new battery. That happens as well.

That happened to my sister earlier this summer. She came

here for a campfire and her wouldn't start and she needed a

new battery. Her battery was eight years old. It was shot.

If you follow my other channel you'll know that when you say

something is shot it means it doesn't work anymore. A loose

wire. So sometimes in your house you flip the light

switch. You go to flip the lights on or flick the lights

on. You can use both words. And when you flip the switch

nothing happens. What might be worse is you flip the switch

and you hear and you see sparks coming out from behind the

switch. That's bad. You should call an electrician. Unless you

are an expert at fixing electrical things or electrical

wiring. In that case if you know what you're doing you

should turn the power off in your house and maybe you need

to fix a loose wire. Bob the Canadian is non-electrician.

This is not advice for fixing things yourself. If this

happens to you if you have a loose wire you should call an

electrician and the electrician will and fix the loose wire.

That is my recommendation unless you are an expert at

doing that because it's dangerous. You can get

electrocuted and that would be bad. You might have a lost

button. This is a pretty simple one, right? Like a button from

your shirt or the button on your pants, a button might fall

off at some point during the day. Maybe the button from the

sleeve of your shirt if you wear long sleeve shirts and

then your only option to fix that is to sew on a new button.

So hopefully you have shirts like mine where all of my

shirts have one or two extra buttons on the inside on the

side of the shirt. So if you lose a button there's an extra

button. That's kind of handy isn't it? I think this shirt

has that. Yep there's an extra button right on the side here.

Um so if you have a lost button you will need to get a needle

and some thread. And you will need to sew a new button onto

your clothing. A tear or rip. So apparently it was cool to

wear ripped jeans recently. I think it still is. So you

wouldn't want to fix the tear or rip because it's cool. It's

fashionable. But for me if my pants or my shirt have a tear

or rip. Usually I'll stop wearing it. Because I wear my

shirts for a very long time. And by the time they get a tear

or rip I won't fix it. But if it was something simple like if

on the sleeve here I had a little tear or rip or maybe the

thread came out. Um I would Get a needle in thread again and I

would fix. I would mend it. Burnt out light bulbs. So this

is probably the most common problem. Um I think most of you

probably have some experience fixing this type of problem.

You flip the light switch and nothing happens. And so you go

and you get a new light bulb and you get you climb on a

chair or ladder. Don't do don't do this unsafely and you would

unscrew the burnt out bulb and you would screw in a new light

bulb. You would change the light bulb. That is the most

common way to refer to it. That light is burnt out. I need to

change the bulb. I need to change the light bulb. I need

to put in a new bulb. Low oil. When you drive a vehicle like a

car or van or truck you should check the oil regularly and

when you check the oil you pull out the dipstick and then you

look and you decide if it has enough oil or not. If it

doesn't you might top up the oil. So you might decide oh it

needs a half a litre of oil. So you would put in half a litre.

And we would describe that as topping up the oil. You might

in your vehicle have an engine light or an oil light that

comes on. And then you should check the oil with the dipstick

and you might have Put in more than half a litre and you might

need to take your car to a garage to have a mechanic look

at it. But if your car is just a little bit low on oil you

might need to top it up. With just a little bit. That's a fun

little phrasal verb isn't it? Top it up. You might have

something that's bent. You might have a fork like this

fork that's bent. When you have something that's bent you need

to straighten it. So something can be bent. If it's bent you

would maybe with this you would just use your hand to try and

straighten it. But certainly when something is bent the fix

is to straighten it. A leaky pipe. So this is every person's

worst nightmare if they own a home is to have a pipe that

leaks overnight and ruins the of your bathroom. But if you

have a leaky pipe you might need to simply tighten the

connections with a wrench. This is called a pipe wrench by the

way. Or you might need to call a plumber and the plumber might

come and replace. There might be seals in the pipe that are

leaking. I'm not a plumber so I don't know all the details. But

certainly you might just try to tighten the connections with a

pipe wrench or a wrench. Or you might call a plumber and have

them come and fix it for you. Frozen pipes. So if you live

somewhere warm this never happens to you. But in places

like Canada in the winter when it gets really really cold

sometimes pipes can freeze. If you have a newer house this

probably will never happen. In our house there's one corner of

our house. If it's below minus twenty-five for multiple days

in a row and if it's windy we have to be careful that the

pipes don't freeze. If the pipes freeze sometimes people

will put a heater by the pipes. They'll wrap warm towels around

the pipe. They'll soak towels in hot water and wrap it around

the pipes or they might use a hair dryer to try and thaw the

pipes. Uh you want to avoid frozen pipes because frozen

pipes can burst and then you might have a leaky pipe. So

first they freeze and if they water expands when it freezes.

If it's frozen for too long you might end up with a leaky pipe.

Draw tap. I actually fixed a dripping tap the other day.

What I did is I took the tap off and I put a new rubber seal

inside the tap and now the tap doesn't leak anymore. Um so if

you have a dripping faucet or a dripping tap usually it just

means you need to put in a new little rubber seal on the

inside. Um and then you will have fixed the dripping tap and

you won't hear the drip drip drip at night when you're

trying to sleep coming from the bathroom which is what I was

hearing. A broken window. So we don't often have a broken

window on our house. But on our barn sometimes a window will

break. And the windows look like this. If a window breaks

you need to remove the broken pane of glass. That's the word

we use in English. And you need to put a new pane of glass in.

So a pane of glass is a piece of glass in a window. You

remove the window pane. You remove the pane of glass. And

you put in a new window pane or a new pane of glass. And then

it's all fixed and You want to be very careful because broken

glass is very very dangerous. A busted handle. Um so sometimes

a door handle stops working. Uh we have one door handle in our

house that needs to be replaced. It's very difficult

to fix a broken door handle or a busted handle or a busted

door handle. Usually because it's very rare. If we have a

door handle that is busted I usually remove the door handle.

I go to the hardware store and buy a new one and install a new

one. Door handles last for years. Like 20 years or more.

Um it's rare for I think I've replaced two door handles in

our house. Because they busted. Um but yeah sometimes you take

it apart and you can fix it. Sometimes you can just replace

one piece inside and fix it. But usually when we have a

busted handle I I usually just replace the whole handle. And

then I don't throw the old one in the river. I bring it to the

metal recycling place so it could get recycled. A rusty

mailbox. Now some of you probably live in cities where

you don't have a mailbox like this but this could be anything

that's rusty. Maybe your lawn mower is rusty. Maybe you have

some tools that are rusty. When something is rusty one thing

you can do is you can sand it. You can take the rust off with

a wire brush. You can use different things like steel

wool to clean the rust and then you can paint it. Our mailbox

isn't this bad but it has some rust on it. So I'll probably go

remove the rust with a wire brush and some sandpaper and

then I will repaint the mailbox or I'll put on some touch up

paint. That means you paint using the same colour just in

the spots where you remove the rust. So if you have something

rusty you remove the rust and you put on some touch up paint

clean it up. A bad or poor connection. The only thing you

can do in this situation if your phone says bad connection

poor connection the only thing you can really do is go

somewhere else. Um you might be able to hold your phone up and

kind of move around and try to get a better connection but if

you have bad or poor connection that's your only real option is

to walk or drive until your phone Connects. So when

something is on the fritz it means it isn't working properly

or not working at all. So earlier we had someone in the

chat Fred Moosterman I think and I said Fritz Fritz. Did I

say Fred? Fritz Moosterman and I said Fritz your name is

going to be in the lesson today. So when something's on

the Fritz it means it isn't working right. You could say ah

my printer's on the fritz. That means your printer isn't

working. Maybe it prints one page when you try to print

three Maybe it doesn't print at all. You would say my printer

is on the fritz. If your computer isn't working you

might say my computer is on the fritz. It isn't working

properly. I need to get it fixed. I need to get it

repaired. Sometimes your phone will lock up. Like it won't do

anything. You try to unlock it. You try to do what you want to

do and then nothing happens on the screen. It just stays

black. You might say my phone is locked up. You might have

your email app open and you can't do anything you can't

exit. You would say my phone's locked up or my phone is

frozen. If that is the situation you probably need to

reset your phone. I know I had an older phone and when it

locked up I had to take the battery out. My new phone I

can't take the battery out. So if it locks up or freezes I I

think if I hold the power button for 30 seconds it turns

off. But basically if this happens you need to figure out

how to restart or reset your phone. Maybe your car has a

small dent or ding. Now these this is a lot these are a lot

of dents. Remember a dent is a big a big I'm trying to

describe dent without using dent. It's when your car has

damage and usually from an accident this is from hail. A

ding is a small dent by the way. Um if this is the case if

it's a small ding sometimes you can buy like a suction cup to

pull the dent or ding out but sometimes you will need to take

your car to a body shop to get it fixed. In Canada when you

get your car the outside of your car fixed you take it to

an auto body shop or a body shop So this is my body. If

someone says body shop in English it can be a place where

you buy creams and ointments for your skin. But you can also

take your car to a body shop to get dents and dings fixed. So

my uncle actually used to own a body shop in our local town and

he did this for a living until he retired. Uh you might have a

dull knife. You might be trying to cut your loaf of bread in

the kitchen. Or maybe you're trying to cut a steak and the

knife is dull. If you have a dull knife you can sharpen the

knife. Maybe you have a knife sharpener and you can go

sometimes you'll see on TV a chef in a restaurant will be

like it's just all sound effects this morning isn't it?

And then they will use that to sharpen a dull knife. Maybe you

wear jewelry. I wear a wedding ring. My wedding ring is maybe

a little bit tarnished. When jewelry is less shiny we use

the word tarnished to describe it. Silver often tarnishes very

easily. It means it loses that shiny silvery look and starts

to look dull. So when your jewelry is tarnished you need

to clean it using jewelry cleaner. There's special

cleaners if you have a gold ring or a silver ring. You

would buy a cleaner specific for that metal. So gold cleaner

silver cleaner. Um and then you would clean your jewelry with

that so that it's not tarnished anymore. You might take your

jewelry to a jeweler. You might have a jewelry shop actually do

the cleaning for you. If it's very very intricate or

difficult. Pothole. So sometimes people drive on the

road. And there's a little hole and people drive through the

little hole and it gets bigger and bigger and eventually you

have a big pothole in the road. When you see a pothole you

can't really fix it yourself. You need to call the city or

you need to call the local government office responsible

for roads. In my situation I would call the township office.

I live in a township. I would call the township office and

say hey there's a big pothole in front of my house. Can you

come and fix it? You can't fix this yourself. Although I know

sometimes people get really frustrated when the government

doesn't fix the hole quickly. Or the town service doesn't fix

it. Uh and so they might try and fix it themselves. Uh a

worn out toothbrush. This toothbrush still works. But it

is worn out. In English when we describe something as being

worn out. It means it's still sort of works but it not

really. So this brush is worn out. It would be a good idea to

get a new brush. Sometimes the tires on your car are worn out.

And you should replace them. They're they still hold air and

you can still dry but they're they're worn out. If it rained

or if you had some snow it'd be very slippery if you're driving

on worn out tires. Um what I do is I go to the dentist. Every

time I go to the dentist the dentist gives me a toothbrush

at the end. So I don't buy toothbrushes. I get a

toothbrush every nine months from the dentist. I get a new

toothbrush. Bad signal. So this is similar to bad connection

that we talked about earlier. Sometimes you're somewhere and

you you go to text or make a phone call and then it just

says bad signal or bad connection or sometimes we say

I have no bars. So you know how there's the little graph. I

don't think I can get this to to focus. But there's a little

there's little bars. And you might say oh I have no bars

right now. I can't make a phone call. I can't use the internet.

And again the only thing you can do is maybe climb a hill or

drive until until you get a signal. And then we also call

this poor reception. So a bad signal. Poor reception. No

bars. All of those would be ways to describe not being able

to use your phone. Or computer right? Like you might be in a

library and the the the Wi-Fi is bad. And you could say oh I

don't have a good connection here. I have a poor I have a

poor connection to the Wi-Fi A lost contact. So I don't wear

glasses. I don't wear contacts. But some people in my family do

and sometimes they'll lose one. Uh and then they'll have to

look for it. Maybe they'll take it out and they'll drop it on

the floor. And then we would say they have a lost contact

lens. So in English we say contact lenses. But we also

just say contacts. So if someone says to you do you wear

glasses or contacts? They're talking about contact lenses.

We're just lazy in English and we don't always use the whole

term when we're talking about something. Uh so if you lose a

contact you I guess you get a flashlight and you look for it.

I guess there's different ways to find a contact. One way that

I think works yeah if you get really close to the floor

sometimes you can see it like if you lay on the floor and

look but you kind of need your contacts in to be able to see

to find your contact is that part of the problem I don't

wear glasses so I don't know and then here we go a tripped

trip so in our basement we have circuit breakers this is a

panel box and it has circuit breakers in it and sometimes

one of the circuit breakers will trip in a English we also

call these trips. So let me rephrase. A circuit breaker is

also called a trip. If someone said the lights aren't working

in this room you could say did you check the trip? Or did you

check the circuit breaker? So this allows us also to say

things like there was a tripped trip in my pinna box. So we can

say that the circuit breaker tripped. It went ping set the

sixth sound effect it went ping and it's in the off position

and you might have to flip it back to the on position. If it

immediately again. It means something's wrong. There's a

short circuit. There's something wrong in that

particular circuit in your house or apartment. So again

this is a panel box. There are circuit breakers in the panel

box. We also call them trips. There are trips in the panel

box. And sometimes the circuit breaker will trip. Because

there's something wrong. Sometimes the trip will trip.

Did you get that? So you have a trip trip. That just sounded

funny the more I said it. So