AsktheBuilder.com News - December 4, 2022

Issue #1210 (I think...)

Dear ,

I want to extend a very warm welcome to you if this is your first newsletter. Thanks for becoming part of my extended family.

I'm a morning person and almost always run out of brain juice when gloaming encapsulates me. I'm blessed that the view from my house is to the east. 

The first photo just below is eye candy Mother Nature handed out this past Sunday morning just after I dropped last week's newsletter into your inbox.

The second photo is one I shot two years ago in early December. You'll often see me down by the lake when I know a great sunrise is in store.

Feel free to stop by early one morning and view the multi-colored light show with me. We can brew coffee over a small open campfire in my Boy Scout mess kit for the real outdoor experience.

Or we can use my mini propane camp stove that I call the lava stove. It heats water so fast that you'd think the pot was perched on a glowing lump of lava. If you need a Christmas gift idea for that outdoor person in your life, this is a GREAT ONE.

The Past Week

First, did you see the recent article about synthetic gasoline? At first blush, it looks like it could be the silver bullet to the slow down the EV train wreck. 

Remember, EVs are NOT zero emmisions if you plug them into the grid to get recharged. You're just trading one fossil fuel for another. STOP being played by all the fancy feel-good ads about EVs.

I'm quite certain I've mentioned in a past newsletter that some of the email I receive might make for humorous reading.

William's message to me a few days ago is an example. Here's what he sent to me:

"My wife says we need new windows because she can feel with her hand on the sill cold air coming in (I can barely feel it). We have 2 wood stoves, one in the living room and one in the family room. No drafts are felt while sitting near the windows. The windows are 40 yrs old. I say I like some fresh air coming in. I don't want a perfectly sealed house."

Did you notice that there was no direct question or riddle posed to me? William was hoping I'd be the calvary charging over the hill giving him support in his conflict with She Who Must Be Obeyed. Not that she would give two hoots about what I have to say!

My one-sentence reply was: "I'm not a marriage counselor." Of course I didn't hear back as he no doubt was disappointed that I'd not come to his defense.

For all I know, William's wife might walk around their house as my kids did. My oldest daughter in the middle of winter used to complain about being cold. She voiced her displeasure dressed in short shorts, a light t-shirt, and no socks.

If you want to be really comfortable in your home and save money on fuel bills, simply wear more clothes. When it's below 20F outdoors, I frequently wear long underwear and a knit hat while I'm indoors. As you might suspect, I'm TOASTY WARM all the time.

I also wonder if William discussed with his better half the massive amount of combustion air the two wood stoves require. If the stoves don't have dedicated make-up air intakes supplying the needed air, they will SUCK the air from the air-leak points all around the house. They start with the places of least resistance. That could be the weatherstripping around the windows.

Just a few days ago I had to help one of my amateur radio buddies here in NH deal with a similar problem. He installed a wood stove and smoke started pouring into his basement from the clean out of an adjacent clay flue liner.

Go here to get a masterclass on make-up air.

Finally, William must have forgotten what his high school physics teacher had to say about convection air currents cascading down cold glass surfaces like a waterfall. It's all here and I suggest you check it out.

Wet-Basement Woes

After disappointing William, Chris reached out to me. I had previously tried to help him solve a problem with his deck. Here's what he sent:

"I had an inside perimeter trench system installed in my basement with a sump pump. However, I still have water appearing in my basement. It appears to be coming up through the center of the floor..."

YEOUCH - Rhetorical Question: Why didn't Chris invest in one of my affordable 15-Minute phone consult calls BEFORE he called up the contractor to install that very expensive system that is NOT SOLVING HIS PROBLEM?

My response to Chris was he now needs to purchase my Wet Basement Crawlspace or Soggy Yard Consult to give him the dry basement he desires.

Don't make the same mistake. GET ON THE PHONE WITH ME BEFORE you reach out to a contractor for a bid. Chris probably wasted at least $5,000, most likely more.

Worst Deck Sealer

I then talked with Rita. She lives in New Jersey and is a musician, vocalist, and music producer. She wanted to know about her wood front porch that was recently stained/sealed.

The work was done two months ago and just in the past week Rita discovered me reading a curated column of mine on the Washington Post website.

Once again, and it's not her fault, she should have called me before her local handyman put Thompson's water seal on her new outside covered porch and the steps leading up to the porch.

I told her to be sure to wash the wood with soap and water as frequently as possible to remove mold and mildew spores that would be gorging on the animal fat that I believe is still the main ingredient in Thompson's.

Thompson's has always finished dead last in all my deck-sealer tests. The last time I tested it, the board I sealed with it turned completely black with mold and mildew in 90 days.

Pretty Good House

Taunton Press sent me one of their latest books. It's called Pretty Good House - A Guide to Creating Better Homes.

As with every book I've ever seen published by Taunton, it's worthy of display on a coffee table. The photos are excellent as well as the illustrations.

It was written by four architects and is full of many practical tips on how to build a home. That said, as I skimmed through the book I failed to see any in-depth discussions concerning the return on investment of the wonderful things they were purveying.
 

Early on in the book the authors point out that the average tenure of home ownership in the USA is less than 8 years! I quoted the same fact in my Roofing Ripoff expose' book. Click that link to read the first three chapters for FREE.

How does the length of time you live an a home impact you? Here's an example.

Three years ago a new home was built on my street by a New Hampshire State Trooper. We became acquainted as I'd stop by to check on progress as I took my walks.

He put in a geothermal heating/cooling system and the extra cost to do this was $30,000.00. The total system cost for the heat pump, ductwork, wells, etc. was $48,000.00 in cold, hard, FINANCED cash after all energy credits, rebates, etc.. In other words, if he went with a traditional heat pump system that has air flow over the coils instead of water, he would have only paid $18,000.00.

Yesterday as Kathy and I drove past the house on the way back from taking Willow the dog to get her rabies shot, I said, "I wonder how much true savings Dan has achieved with his system? After all, he has to use the same amount of electricity to move the heated and cooled air through the house.

He also has to pay for electricity to run the water pumps to get water to/from the well. He'd not have had to pay for that with a traditional heat pump. So the small amount of savings in the efficiency of putting 50F water over the coil vs cold air may be significantly eroded by what he's paying to get water out of the ground."

It's more complex than that and in addition you always have to factor in any interest you pay on financing a geothermal system, but my point is this.

Let's assume the portion of Dan's electric bill each month that is used by his geothermal system is $150.00. Let's then assume that if he had a normal heat pump with freon in it, he'd pay $225.00 a month. So each month he saves $75.00. That's $900.00 a year in savings. 

If Dan gets transferred to a new post in NH, or outgrows his house making babies and moves out in even ten years, he LOST BIG money. He paid a premium of $30,000 extra to SAVE $9,000.00.

Pretty Good House is FILLED with stories like Dan's but I didn't see any in-depth autopsies on how much one really saves and how long it takes to break even.

Bottom Line: If you like to look at inspiring photos and read case studies of houses that have lots of juicy things to include in your next new home, this book is filled with them.

Two Tips

Tip 1: If you're going to have a sensitive in-person conversation with someone, not only turn off your cell phone, but also put it somewhere in another room or far enough away that there's no way your voice can be heard by the device.

If you think that turning off your phone disables the microphone from listening to what you say and possibly recording it, then you don't know much about how spy equipment works.

Think about Alexa and Siri. They're listening to EVERYTHING going on in your home!!! Any speaker that's connected to the Internet in your home can easily work backwards transforming itself into a microphone.

Go here to READ THE STORY about what you just saw in the video above.

Just because the screen goes dead and your phone seems unresponsive doesn't mean ALL parts of the phone are no longer receiving current and working in the background.

STOP TRUSTING everything and everyone. Before you shake your head wondering about me, peruse this meme:

Tip 2: Do you have issues with a bolt that keeps coming loose? Did you know about thread-locking compounds? They come in different strengths and do a marvelous job of keeping nuts and bolts tight.

Bonus Tip: Check with your local computer repair shop. See if they have a community service program where they donate refurbished computers to needy folks. Mine does and two days ago I gave them two workhorse iMacs that served Kathy and I for years.

If you do this, STAY THERE and ask them to harvest the hard drive to give back to you. In most cases, it takes just five minutes for them to do this. NEVER give away or throw away a computer with the hard drive still in it. The same goes for a smart phone. You might want to throw your old phone in a fire barrel. I'm a fire-barrel expert.

Tim Carter

Founder - www.AsktheBuilder.com

500+ Contacts in 14 Days - www.W3ATB.com

Do It Right, Not Over! 

P.S. How do you water a live Christmas tree twice a day if you're out of town?

(Waving hand in air arm almost out of socket) ME! ME! ME! I know the answer!

P.P.S. This is what happens when one parent accidentally falls asleep on the couch while the other parent went to bed hours before.

If you want to see a short video of the big toddler that gnawed on the chair leg, CLICK HERE. If it doesn't play, TOO MANY people may have tried to view it at once or you tilted my Google Drive download limit. Try again another time.