*|MC:SUBJECT|*

View this email in your browser

Outside Temperature: 45 °F
Outside Relative Humidity: 85%

Sunrise: 6:45 AM EST

February 6, 2022 - Falmouth, MA
In this issue:
Letting Go - That's Enough
Some Writing Notes
Energy Audits & HVAC Systems
Eight Cousins Bookshop
Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole
PHR Books
PHR Work In-Progress

Letting Go - That's Enough

     Nature knows when it is time for a baby to be born. That's enough. Time for junior to enter the world.
     There is a contractor in my town who's slogan is "Perfect is good enough".
     When I used to commission projection televisions, I started out tweaking and tweaking and tweaking, each time pushing something else out of alignment. I finally learned when to stop. When I worked for an underwater acoustic company in the early days of programming and software, I remember getting frusrated

with the programmers who could always find a better way and continued to edit over and over, delaying shipment of the system.
Learning to know when to stop is an art and all too often we get down into the weeds and continue to look for what we think might be a better way to accomplish our goals. Allan Sherman had a wonderful musical bit about it in the End of a Symphony.
There are many things in life that require an understanding of when to stop, when to say enough. Let's move on. Eventually nature has a solution for that too.

Stay well,

Paul@paulhraymer.com

Some Writing Notes

I will be sharing the microphone with Bill Spohn on his BuildingHVACScience podcast. You can link directly to the podcast by clicking HERE.
     Bill is not only a genius when it comes to building analysis tools, he is also a kind and generous person who has done an enormous amount for the industry.
     His podcast is geeky but fascinating. For one thing, Bill has built an incredible house for himself (as you might imagine) and it is worth learning about.
     He allowed me to venture down the scary path of using as house as a murder weapon - a suitable subject for mystery novels. So if you feel in the mood for a good story, tune in.

Book/Reader websites:
     I just want to mention several websites that are focused on books and readers. These are massive piles of books and readers that you can dive into in a variety of ways.
     Goodreads is a fun site with lots of groups and discussions about all sorts of book things. I have an author profile on Goodreads and would welcome additional followers.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about Goodreads:

Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. The website's offices are located in San Francisco

Goodreads was founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler. By July 2019, the site had 90 million members.

Bookbub is a different animal. I just began my author relationship with them. Followers would be welcome here as well.
This is what Wikipedia has to say about Bookbub:

BookBub is a book discovery service that was created to help readers find new books and authors.The company features free and discounted ebooks selected by its editorial team, as well as book recommendations, updates from authors, and articles about books. The service is free for readers and includes a website and personalized email newsletters.The Guardian called BookBub the “Groupon of e-books.”

BookBub has more than 15 million users in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia^. For publishers and authors, BookBub provides marketing tools that are intended to help them reach readers and sell more books. The company also operates an audiobook retailer called Chirp. In 2019, BookBub had 120 employees, 15 million subscribers.

The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[1

Energy Audits & HVAC Systems

A friend asked me about a quote she received for weatherization work on her house. Massachusetts has a wonderful program, called MassSave, for helping people reduce the heat loss in their houses by providing free energy audits, 75% discounts on insulation installation, and 100% discounts on many other measures such as air sealing and weatherstripping doors. Other states have similar programs. Reducing residential energy consumption has a significant impact on climate change (not to mention your monthly expenses). It's sort of like free money, and I would highly recommend taking advantage of it.

A comprehensive energy audit is quite involved. It includes using a blower door to measure the house's air leakage. It also includes a combustion safety test to make sure that the furnace or water heater is getting enough combustion air for the gases to move up the chimney and out of the house no matter what is going on inside. (That needs to happen even if all the HVAC systems, bathroom fans, range hood, and any other exhaust fan is running.) The audit should also include a complete visual inspection of connections from the house to the attic, basement, or garage to catalog where air sealing should be done.

But another aspect of my friend's analysis was the heating and cooling system. A second contractor came in and gave her an estimate: "Install (1) 'Fujitsu' 2 zone ductless heat pump system" for $10,500 or "Install (1) 'Fujitsu' fully ducted heat pump system in the attic" for $19,800. What does that even mean? If they do the same thing, why wouldn't you go with the less expensive one? What metric did the contractor use to propose these systems? How is the homeowner supposed to know what to do? Homeowners have to know a lot about a lot of things, but they can't possibly know everything about something they may only experience once in their lives. Even if you look up Fujitsu on the internet, it's just going to be a whole lot of promotional information about Fujitsu equipment. The contractor can tell you lots of things, but most of that information is going to sound like a foreign language to most people.
So what can you do in a situation like this?

Try to get an HVAC contractor reference from a friend;
Contact a local energy efficiency organization (Cape & Island Self Reliance here)
Find a HERS rating company in your area.

I would welcome other suggestions that I can pass along. I wish I could offer a trustworthy referral service.

Bookshop.org supports local bookshops and writers. They have raised over $19 million for bookshops! Click the link below to visit the books I have reviewed in this newsletter. Thank you.

Click for books and bookshops mentioned here

Eight Cousins
Falmouth, MA

My local bookstore! Eight Cousins is on Main Street in Falmouth near the Town Hall. They have a wonderful children's section along with all their other books. (My two year old grandson loves the books. Oh, the stories he can hear. Today he was looking for an owl named Peter!)

189 Main Street, Falmouth

Benjamin Bunny & The Rabbit Hole

Mark Dawson's Publishing Classes: I have decided that I am going to bite the bullet and do my own marketing. I looked into hiring a publicity company to handle it. Wouldn't that be lovely? Just settle back and collect the royalties. But it is very difficult to determine who to trust and they charge a whole lot.

So I have decided to try to learn this stuff myself as I move toward the launch of Second Law in June. I bought Dawson's launch course which is only $20 and then I invested in his advertising package as well. I will let you know how this goes. I can tell you that only a couple of modules in, and I have piled up a bunch of stuff that I have added to my to-do list. Four months to launch no longer seems enough time!

PHR Books
Residential Ventilation Handbook V2
Recalculating Truth
Death at the Edge of the Diamond
Also available on-line and in fine bookshops.

PHR Work In-Progress
The new novel - Second Law - is down to the final edits and I'm feeling really happy with it. I am going to run it through ProWritingAid to try to pick up all the typos, one more read through and it should be ready to go!

If you enjoyed this issue, please share it. Thank you!

Forward

Salty Air Publishing Newsletter is a free, bi-weekly newsletter from Paul H. Raymer that launched in 2020. More than 1,000 subscribers receive it. Knowing that you are giving me your time to read these words, it is my goal to be as interesting and helpful as possible.

Thank you! You can support it by giving me feedback and sharing the newsletter with friends and colleagues.

Please Subscribe!