January 6, 2015 AsktheBuilder Newsletter & Tips

Happy New Year! 2015 is already six days old!

I've got every reason to believe that this year is going to be a fantastic one for you and me.

I'm going to do my best to deliver to you news, tips and great new product information so you can save sweet moola and time.

Here's what it looked like at my house just minutes after sunrise on New Year's Day.

Your looking at EPIC ice. It's as smooth as glass and crystal clear. When I took the photo it was very thin, perhaps one-half inch or less.

The wind came up as the day progressed and gobbled it up. What a shame. Not all of the lake water was frozen and as the wind blows across the water towards the ice, the lapping water waves erode the thin ice.

Five years ago, Mother Nature blessed this lake with THICK ice like this. It was similar to that opens in a new windowlake ice in the Slovak Mountains just before Christmas. Go ahead and opens in a new windowCLICK HERE and see if you get vertigo watching that short video!

After I shared the video of the ice in the Slovak Mountains, I had a few folks ask me how it's possible for ice to be that clear as the ice cubes in their freezers are always white.

Your ice cubes are white because of tiny, tiny air bubbles that form as the water freezes. There's gas inside your water just like there is in soda in two-liter bottles. When the pressure is released, this air comes out of suspension. You see the bubbles come up in your Coke or Pepsi, right? That because the pressure in your room is much less than what was in the bottle.

Remember, minutes before the water is put into the ice cube trays it was under 60 or more pounds of pressure per square inch inside your water pipes. As soon as you put it in the freezer, the pressure drops to around 14 pounds per square inch.

In the Slovak mountains and at my house, the lake water was not under 60 pounds per square inch of pressure minutes before it froze. It's been under normal air pressure. Any air in the water long ago bubbled out.

The water in my lake and in the Slovak mountains is very pure. There's no sediment in suspension in the water. Tiny particles of sediment are what make river water cloudy.

You can experiment and make clear ice at your home. Just take some tap water put it in a clear small glass and leave it on the counter for a few days. Then put it in the refrigerator for a few days. Finally, put it in the freezer. It should freeze crystal clear.

Cool Christmas Gifts

Santa was very good to me. I got a nice floor mat for my Man Cave, a wonderful pair of wool gloves with the fingertips exposed but with a mitten cover if I need it and a fantastic optical sight for one of my tactical rifles.

I hope you also got some nice things. My daughter Kelly got an interesting book - opens in a new windowHomework for Grownups - that I was looking at for a good half hour.

It's a practical book I feel you could really use. Here it is.

Beware when you read the reviews at Amazon.com. This book is only about 1.5 inches thick, covers multiple huge topics and as such can't go into enormous depth in each area.

It's UNREALISTIC to expect the author to cover all aspects of each topic. This book looks at the topics from 36,000 feet, but even from that altitude, you'd be amazed at what you've forgotten or didn't learn while you were passing notes, crushing tater tots or daydreaming.

What I liked about this book is it contained LOTS of practical information you might find HELPFUL in your daily life.

I guarantee you you'll discover some things in this book that will prompt you to say, "Heck, I DID forget that!"

The Dancing Walk and Wait Signal

You're going to opens in a new windowlove this video. It's the most unusual Walk / Wait signal you'll probably ever see. In fact, have you been to Lisbon, Portugal and did you see it?

TIM NEEDS YOUR HELP!!!!