March 21, 2018 AsktheBuilder Newsletter
New subscriber? Welcome! Existing one? TNX for your continued trust.
This is going to be a very interesting newsletter issue. Lots of moving parts.
Stick with me on this one, especially this first topic because it contains a much-needed reminder for you.
When Was the Last Time?
When was the last time you went out of your way to tell a business that you LOVED something they make, sell or provide? Be honest. Weeks or months?
Now, when was the last time you COMPLAINED about something - I mean go to the effort to write, call or speak with a manager? It's far easier to complain than to praise.
Here's why I'm asking you these two questions. Over the past month, you may be a NEW subscriber or an existing one that reads my weekly syndicated newspaper column in your local paper.
Hah! You may not even know I write a syndicated column! See how bad I am at sharing what's going on? Does my column appear in your local paper? If not, you can make it happen. See far below.
My weekly syndicated Ask the Builder column started in October of 1993 and still runs in about sixty newspapers around the USA. Some are damn big like the Washington Post, Orange County Register, Hartford Courant, Spokesman Review, Columbus Dispatch, and others!
For twenty-five years, I kept with the same boring format in my column.
CLICK HERE to see this old stale format. Seriously, please click that link.
About six weeks ago, I had an idea to change up the format of my column. I started to mention my website, videos, newsletter, podcast and other FREE things you could get at my website.
CLICK HERE to see one of these NEW format columns. I beg you to do this if you currently read my column in your LOCAL paper.
Pay CLOSE ATTENTION to the last two paragraphs in the NEW FORMAT and the last sentence in the column. Be sure you click that and get the FREE document I created! Tell me if you LIKE the new free document.
Here's what you need to know. I can see how many people subscribe to this newsletter each day. For YEARS, it's been about six or eight a day on average.
Guess what happened after my NEW FORMAT columns started to appear in your local paper?
You DISCOVERED all the free stuff at my website and you signed up for this newsletter. My signups all of a sudden jumped to 50, 60 and 80 a day!
That tells me you LIKED what you saw in my new format. Your local paper was not telling you about all the great free stuff you could get from me. But you know what? I've been wrong before.
Do you LIKE the new format over the old format? Do you LIKE that three topics are covered instead of one?
Did you like that the new column format revealed other ways you can get FREE tips from me other than the just my column in your paper?
If you do like the NEW format and you do read my column in your local paper, then you could help yourself and me by writing a short Letter to the Editor of your paper.
Tell her/him WHY you like the new format better than the old one and that you loved the fact that you discovered all sorts of new stuff at my website that helped you.
IMPORTANT TIP FOR YOU: Here's what I've discovered over the past twenty-five years of writing a syndicated newspaper column.
If you don't write periodic letters to the editor telling them what you LIKE in the paper - it can be a sports columnist, a recipe feature, a comic strip, a crossword puzzle - the paper starts to think NO ONE likes the feature and they CANCEL it.
It's easy for a normal store to judge how much you like a product. If your grocery store sells 500 jars of Raye's Sweet and Spicy mustard each day and it's the BEST-SELLING product in the store, do you think they'll stop stocking it?
It happens to be the best mustard I've ever had, but forget about that for now.
The fact the product flies off the shelves tells the store you love it. But newspaper editors have NO IDEA if you like something. They're not standing over your shoulder watching you read the paper.
Please consider going to your local paper's website and find the Letter to the Editor form. Just write whatever you want about my column or ANY feature and tell the editor WHY you like it/them.
I thank you in advance if you'll do this for me.
You need to do this for ANYTHING YOU LIKE at ANY STORE. Write letters, send messages, etc. to TELL the OWNER you like something.
Trust - It's DANGEROUS
Have you been burned before? You hire someone to do something and they do a crappy job. Sometimes you don't realize the job is bad because the mistakes are HIDDEN. The legal term for this is latent defect.
I know because I do lots of expert witness work.
It's important for you to realize I didn't build the house I live in here in New Hampshire. I'm currently working my butt off to build a new dream house for Kathy and I. But that's a story for another day.
Last week, I was in Portland, Maine, attending a very interesting construction conference - CSI Maine High-Performance Building Conference.
The event is over so don't try to buy tickets for goodness sake!
At the event one of the speakers, Steve Easley, talked about heat loss and the overall R Factor of walls in homes and other structures.
What overall R-factor means is what's the AVERAGE R-factor of a wall in your home? You may have R-19 fiberglass batts between your wall studs, but that doesn't mean you have a R-19 wall.
The windows, air leaks, solid framing members, etc. all have an R-factor much less than R-19. When you average out all the components in your walls, you may have an overall R-factor of 8 or less. GULP!
I decided to get out my FLIR thermal camera that connects to my smart phone this past weekend. It's such a cool tool to have. You can use it to spot all sorts of things around your home, including WATER LEAKS! Water leaks show up as blue or purple spots in thermal images because the wet surface is COOLER from the water evaporating.
Look at the CRAPPY job the insulation contractor did here at my house eighteen years ago:
What you're looking at is the east wall in our giant family room. That's an Andersen french door and it was 7 F outside when I took the photo. The blue and purple tell you it's colder than the yellow and orange areas in the image.
Pay attention to the sloped ceiling above the door. There's NOT supposed to be blue and purple there! That's telling you the insulation at those spots is inferior or the idiot contractors did NOT put in insulation baffles to STOP air from the soffits from migrating through the batts as it travels to the roof ridge vent.
You don't want air moving through fiberglass insulation! The air moving through fiberglass significantly reduces the R-value.
Here's a second image looking at the east wall in the dining room.
WTH???
Look at how much blue and purple is on that wall to the right of the dark-blue spot in the lower left of the image. That dark-blue patch is another Andersen french door so with all that glass, you bet it's going to give off a cold thermal signature.
I turned on the temperature feature of the FLIR thermal camera for this photo. The surface of the ceiling drywall right where it meets the wall is 57.9 F.
GIVE ME A BREAK! That ceiling should not be that cold.
Why is this important to YOU?
One thing I discovered at the CSI conference is that TOO FEW people are thinking long term.
How long will your home be a home for some family? It could be 100 years or more.
How easy is it to upgrade insulation or fix problems? It's NOT EASY.
If your home is going to be around for 100 years, how much ENERGY will be WASTED because some idiot worker did a half-baked job on your home?
How do you prevent errors like this?
It's NOT EASY - I'll grant you that.
You need to stop TRUSTING contractors. You need to STOP HOPING everything is going to go well. You need to stop cutting corners. You need to think LONG TERM.
Just yesterday, I shared in a podcast call with a woman that she needs to watch the carpet installers like a HAWK and be in the room when they nail down the tackless strip so the nails do NOT penetrate the electric cables that control the radiant heat mat in her floor.
Another tip is to install a thin metal plate over the wires so it's impossible for nails to penetrate the cables. But you need to make sure it's the RIGHT metal and placed in the RIGHT manner so it doesn't cut through the cables 30 years from now.
You need to be present or HIRE someone to be present to oversee workmanship in critical areas of your home that WILL BE COVERED UP.
If not, you'll probably just get screwed.
I'd say that's enough for today, how about you?
Please go write to your local paper editor now - it's so important!
If my column is NOT in your local paper, then by gosh TELL the editor to put it in the paper! They know how to get it, trust me.
Tim Carter
Founder - www.AsktheBuilder.com
Captain Magic Podcast Man - CLICK HERE for Podcast 3
Do It Right, Not Over!