Life Done Free
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The Unwilling to Participate Spouse
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The Unwilling to Participate Spouse
He’s a city boy that married a country girl.
I’ll be very careful of what I say on this subject because I can easily tilt to full blast and that’s not what I want. Living this way (homesteading), has always been a dream of mine since I was very young. My husband’s – anything computers and technology. The two different life dreams don’t clash until you get to the physical labor that I, as a woman, can’t do alone.
Ladies don’t glisten in this lifestyle… they down right sweat!
During those times when the compost pile needs flipping or the CTOS (chicken tractor on steroids) needs to be moved or… – insert any other labor intensive farm task here -… He comes outside to “help” me and what I end up with is an audience of one – watching me do all of the work and watching the sweat roll down my face and drip from my nose. Yes, it’s hard work. He acknowledges that I work hard but he just wants no part of it… at least not THAT part.
Cuteness overload!
He loves animals and thinks that they are adorable – BUT, won’t feed nor cleanup after them. He wants to fully participate in the fun, cuddly, cute stuff but that’s it. I quickly become the MEAN OVERLORD of training while he becomes the FUN CUDDLE-DADDY! They don’t care that he’s not the one with the food etc., then suddenly MY dream is highjacked and I morph into a unpaid farmhand.
Anyway… can anyone else out there relate at all? Does anyone have any ideas that wouldn’t lead to arguments, ’cause I hate confrontations and try to avoid stress as much as possible!! 😎
Thanks!
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152 Replies
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This is a well articulated question and unfortunately one that happens often. I look forward to hearing other peoples responses. You said that he was into technology, can you challenge him to come up with ways to make it easier for you? I know many relationships that have a member not fully on board. I have seen many change and get on board. usually it is a awaking moment most often brought on by an event. In my case my wife really woke up after Sandy Hook.
Do you guy discuss the world and the collapsing food chain? Is he interested in being free? find his currency and use that to help nudge him along. Final point, always remember it was your dream.
TAG
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Sorry to hear that, when your both on the same page it is nice. My wife and I work hard together to keep our farmstead going and she works outside of the farm 4 days a week. I’ll show her your post and see if she has any ideas for you. She slowly brought me to the light getting all our animals.
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Thank you! …and what adorable animals you have there!!
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Good morning, as I was cutting down my buckwheat and throwing seed your post came back to me about our general differences. A husband and wife and our society as a whole. I feel we have to get back to the place where we all can embrace one another’s differences and have respect for each other.
Just thought I would share, glad we have Freesteading to be able to do this.
May God bless your marriage and America.
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I completely agree with you and I hope that I didn’t come off as ungrateful for the person that I’ve chosen to grow old with. He and I are VERY different on some things but those differences compliment each other. On the things that we agree on, then well, we are unstoppable. Do I wish that the things that I grumbled about were things that we agreed on?… you bet, only so that we could blow it out of the park! However, if that never happens, I’ll just consider that my alone time with God and animals. 😉
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Amen sister,
Together you both hold the line.
Ps, sometimes we got to blow off steam among friends.
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I’m somewhat in the same situation. I don’t have a homestead with animals yet. I’ve been begging for a chicken pen and got promised I would get one but it hasn’t happened yet.
I did get him to help me plant a small garden that didn’t produce very well this year. It was my first time having a garden. I am blessed to have a huge farm not far from me that I go and buy many of my vegetables to pressure can and thoroughly enjoy it. He loves to eat all the fresh vegetables I put up but isn’t crazy about helping prepare them. I’ve been canning for about three years
His speciality which I’m thankful for is deer, hog etc.
We were able to process our own meat last year and I was tickled pink with that.
I have to beg to get him to help me. Most of the time he will give in.
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Thanks Bug! I wish you the same success that I’m hoping for! 😊
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Does anyone have any ideas that wouldn’t lead to arguments, ’cause I hate confrontations and try to avoid stress as much as possible!!
Here is my advice; “Stop trying to convince your spouse.” Hold on, hold on, bear with me. You are married, in a relationship, chained to together like convicts on a road crew; whatever. You are too close and too emotionally invested, which almost always leads to an argument. There are two things you can do in tandem. First, like TagnBee said talk about the world and the way it is. Subtlety guide your spouse’s perspective towards seeing the need to make a change. Next, find someone like minded that your spouse at least respects, if not trusts. Have them make conversation about such a big topic. Have them ask the questions you want to ask, or make the statements you wish to make. You’ll be amazed at what a difference it make coming from a third party. Seriously, what used to lead to your spouse thinking you are a nut job and an argument, when it comes from someone else will, at times, be as though it had come straight from the lips of Almighty Himself. It can be frustrating; it works, though. I’ve seen it first hand.
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I can 100% confirm the 3rd party technique. The number of times that my wife has adopted a viewpoint that she read on reddit after disagreeing with me about it for years is mindblowing. In fairness, I’ve seen the sense in some of her positions after hearing them argued by a third party as well.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by Barred-Rock-or-Brahma. Reason: Big thumbs, small screen
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by
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Grumpy! What an excellent suggestion!! Thank you so much! …CD_Gray, thanks for confirming that it works!! 😄
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Grumpy! What an excellent suggestion!!
I wish I could take credit for it. Tag, from LifeDoneFree, actually turned me on to the concept. I tried teaching my wife how to shoot for years. Invariably, it always ended up with her getting mad, and me frustrated beyond reason. One day, he had me step back and he started showing her how to do it. At one point she had tears rolling down her cheeks and she was calling him an A-Hole because he had pushed her so far outside her comfort zone. She was banging away at the steel like she never had before, though. By the end of the day, she was running her gun like a pro., and I had learned a valuable lesson in spousal relationships.
But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
1 Timothy 5:8
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Excellent story, Grumpy! Thank you for sharing it and for the scripture!
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Although I’m not married the best advice I’ve heard is to be silent. If your spouse is upset, yelling etc. don’t say a word. This will only fuel the fire. Let the fire die down before trying to reach a resolution.
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That’s very true NoahC!
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My two cents is to see if you can’t incorporate his strengths into your system, rather than try to get him to do something that he’s not interested in. This is especially important given that the farm life seems to be your dream, not his.
My wife is a city girl from Amsterdam, and I’d have thrown myself in a canal if she had tried to force me into that lifestyle. My wife and your husband deserve a great deal of credit and patience for agreeing to humor us in the first place when they’d probably prefer a lifestyle that we’d be absolutely miserable living.
There is plenty of room on a farm for a techy types, especially if he can actually install things. Maybe he’d be interested in setting up a security camera system that has on-site storage and can send motion alerts to your phone. Maybe he can rig chicken coop doors that automatically open and close with the sun. Techy people seem to enjoy solving problems, so maybe he’s beter suited to help you come up with creative ways to solve problems than he is to flipping compost and shoveling manure.
Also depending on the profitability of the particular flavor of tech nerd stuff that he’s into, you might be better off having him behind a keyboard than behind a pitchfork. A guy that can make $50 an hour typing is wasting his time by doing work that he could pay someone else $10 an hour to do.
Lastly, kids love to work. If I had known that I wanted this life 10 years ago, I’d have had a lot more sons.
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To echo some of the thoughts here, maybe see if he is perhaps interested in things more in the design space. For example, designing and building buildings or stuff for the garden. Do you have a rain capture system and if not would he enjoy designing and building one? Or learning about permaculture and coming up with ways to implement various techniques in labor-saving ways.
If he will sit still at a PC all day, good chance he would sit still reading some books, so maybe see if you can get him to check out some books on the topics. Billy at PFP made a video about some suggestions, and as someone who has sat down and read about a dozen books (the majority from this list), I can second the recommendations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdcBktuvV8
As an unmarried guy working in IT, sorry to say I can’t relate to your situation, but I can understand the appeal of sitting at the computer. Ultimately what dawned on me a couple years ago and got me off my butt is that at the end of the day, the computer will not produce food or help you get any exercise.
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Hey thanks Jonathan! I hope that light bulb moment hits… but I don’t think it will be through books! If I put a book in his hands he’ll fall and stay asleep ’til morning! lol
That’s a awesome video though! I’ve seen it and bought several of those books for myself! 😎
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Thanks for the awesome suggestions! He has already done many of the things you mentioned! The chicken coop door is one that I’ve thought of but for some reason some of my chickens fancy themselves owls… staying out much later than after the sun has gone down!! Crazy chickens!
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That interesting. I am a software engineer and I am the one into homesteading in my family.
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He has several employees under him that are hunters and one that retired that was a cattle farmer. So I know it can be done. lol
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OH WOW! I never anticipated the tons of responses that I’ve gotten on this post!! Thanks guys!! Ya’ll had SO many great ideas and advice! …Lots of which had me giggling at the keyboard and nodding my head! 😂
I should back up and give proper credit. Two years ago we bought the land we are on now. Together, we have built a small one bedroom apartment/house, (purely from watching YouTube videos), that we live in now, just to get us “onsite” for the building of our main house. Later I will Air B-n-B the one bedroom out. We have also built chicken coop with run, and a tool building and a chickshaw chicken tractor. He, all alone, has built a picnic shelter, mower and garden tool lean-to, and is currently building our storage building that will later be his workshop. I need to add that I would’ve or would help in those building projects but I was doing other things like: gardening, canning food, mowing the lawn, clearing land, burning or chipping brush, weed eating some, taking care of animals and cleaning house. So, in all fairness, he does work hard too. AND, he’s already set me up a security system and notifications on my critters. We have rain catch that he designed and implemented on the chicken coop.
I could really do without the comments of “I could buy groceries from the store cheaper and a lot easier than this.” when he’s not actually doing the “this” he refers to… I am (and/or want to start doing — like animal processing (which is a HUGE step for me)). …but, what can ya do, lol.
I’ve got a really good man, some things are just like pulling teeth but I have faith that we’ll get there!
Thank ya’ll so much and please, by all means, keep the comments coming! It will give me and others a source of ideas and encouragement! 🤗
Gorge Jetson meets Little House on the Prairie 😄
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This is an important response. On our farm we have roles. I built our house and all of the systems and infrastructure. I built the coops and gardens. I moved the dirt and built the fences. From time to time I will help bee harvest or preserve but most of the time she does that work as I am continuing to deploy systems that make both of our lives easier. I recently built Bee a processing kitchen that takes her from processing outside to indoors . She now has a dedicated processing kitchen. I probably wont spend much time there. we are very equal on the farm, but have very different roles.
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Give me some of that stamina Brother.
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have you seen my videos? she is a slave driver and mean……lol
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I feel your pain.
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Great comment 👌
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Thank you so much for your valued input and suggestions, Tag!
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My advice is to enjoy the fact that you are living the way have always wanted and that you are able to provide for your family. I have begged, bargained and argued and always get the same result. People only tend to change out of necessity so consider what your doing as the ground work for when necessity comes.
I also brag a bit about how good “my food” taste or how good “my garden” looks ect. It doesn’t work either but I still enjoy doing it!😁😁😁
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Oh yeah! Loving everyday! Great comment! Thank you!
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I know most of this has been heard here or elsewhere.
But in our house, I was the one dragging my feet. I had dreams to be city my whole life! I grew up in a tiny Utah town, and couldn’t wait to get out and into the city. I wanted it all! Big house, nice cars, lush green lawn, 9-5 job and all those “convenient” perks! Once that was had, life got boring. Down the road I joined a 1%er motorcycle club… I was looking for community I guess, and riding the Harley was what I did to blow off steam.
My wife, my tiny 5′ even, 100 lbs wife, used to scare the shit out of these big tough bikers I ran around with. She started a little raised garden, while I was out playing motorcycles. She started chickens when I was sleeping under overpasses, on the road with the “brothers”. Then when she put it on paper one day, how much of my time, money and life I’ve thrown away chasing a never-ending dreams of grandeur and debt. Stuck in the matrix. That got me somehow thinking about my Grandma. How did she raise 10 kids, on her own, with no outside help? How did she survive on a minimal income, and raise 12 of her grandchildren as well! After asking her, all she said was “No debt. I paid cash for everything. If I didn’t have the cash, I didn’t need it. If I couldn’t grow it, I didn’t need it. WOW!
2 years later, we’re about 6 months away from being debt free! No more club life, but I still have the Harley. It’s currently on the market, to try and pay off the rest of the debt. Can’t haul livestock on a Harley either (trust you me, I really looked into making that a possibility 🤣😂).
In the end, until I finally swallowed that red pill, I was blind. I think some of us it just takes a little longer to see the TRUE big picture. Be patient. Spouses come around. ☺️
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How funny! I can just see you hauling a miniature animal trailer behind a Harley! …and really… who would say anything to you about it either!! 😂😂
I’m a half a foot taller than your honeypie but I can clearly picture her grabbing you (if you have one) or a biker buddy by the beard to show you something she needs done! 🤣 (I may not even be close with my visualization but that’s what popped into mind reading that!) Thanks for the story and assurance!
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Oh yeah! She’s a feisty one for sure! She’s definitely put a bigger dude in their place, more than once lol.
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Don’t laugh – they really DO make tiny horse trailers to go behind motorcycles!
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That’s cool!
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lol.. Well, there ya go! I could fit a couple of goats in there!
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I totally relate to everything you’ve said – except my husband also does not animals. Or anything “untidy”. I give him major props for being supportive of my gardening even though he thinks it’s an eyesore most of the time (except high summer). But we work with it. He used to say that about buying food versus preserving it as well. But I realized it’s NOT about the cost. It’s about knowing what’s in it. When I switched the approach, he could understand my point. Especially when he began to taste the difference in foods!
That’s been my biggest life-saver – listen to him. Hear what he’s saying, and either figure out how to work with it or change the perspective. He might still think I’m being silly for canning corn (or whatever) but he understands why I’m doing it, and it’s not about the cost. Because there’s no way I could ever preserve food and compete cost-wise against scaled production.
I feel you on this one. Thanks for asking it! You’ve gotten a lot of great suggestions I’ll be using myself. 🙂
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I try to do just that! Thank you! I’m really glad so many others go through this and I’m not the only one… AND that others are being helped through this post!
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You are definitely not alone and I’m actually happy to see so many others chiming in! I also married a “city dweller” and even though he works his butt off and has provided for myself and our family he treats what I do as a hobby and not a life style shift.
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Ah yes, my city slicker has made the same comment to others, “Tam has a little hobby farm in the back.” ….😐
You’re definitely not alone.
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That’s how my husband looks at what I am doing…like my hobby. He was raised on this land but I’m the one working it. He is a member of the “do it once and it’s done “ club. But I’m still working away at it.
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I’ve found that nothing is never done! lol Weeds will always grow. Animals will always escape. Things will always break. Grass always grows. … I get it though! 😏
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Excuse me? Are you married to my husband too? 😂 I will be reading on in hopes that someone has some advice.
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🤔🤔 Hmmm… Tall guy?.. about 6’5″?? Dark hair???
😂
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My husband isn’t into the idea of homesteading like I am, but I’ve decided that I will only take on what I can handle. He does help me with the chickens. He designed and helped me build the coop, helps me lift heavy things or things that take more then one person to move. I’m resolved to this being enough for now. I do the gardens and majority of yard work. It’s a lot, but I love it. I move the mulch and deep bedding to the chicken run, clean the coop, make the compost, etc. I do the canning and preserving etc. I enjoy doing these things. We may not ever end up with any other animals other then possibly meat birds or quail (although honey bees is my next project), But, I have just decided that I’m only going to take on as much as I can handle and still find joy.
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Sounds like you are being smart about it. My husband was the same when we had our homestead, but he didn’t even help me with heavy stuff or building the chicken house and yard. He did help with some of the fencing around the house and yard, but most of the time I was on my own or my neighbor would help if he saw me struggling with a project. Like you, I just did what I felt I could handle and didn’t overdo. I also enjoy working outside in my herbs and flowers.
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Wow! That’s what my sister told me! “Don’t take on any more than I, myself can do on any given day… just incase I don’t have help.” Wise women. 😉
Oh I’ve sooo wanted my own beehive! He’s petrified of bees though and if I brought any on property, I’d be a divorced woman! lol Bless his heart!
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Sounds like you are doing it right. Do what makes you happy!
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Thanks MJ! ☺
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I agree, My husband isn’t interested in homesteading at all. I know that and have accepted him as he is. I do hope one day he will get interested and help but until then it my dream so it’s my hard work. I do use treats to get his help when I have to and if he sees am having a hard time of something he will either help or get someone to help me. I just keep telling myself our Great Great GrandMothers had to do this on their own when Men were called away, and they didn’t have any power tools to help. I know I can do this! One day at a time.
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❤️❤️❤️
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Excellent point Sandra!! I will certainly keep that in mind on those challenging days!! What amazing women the great grandmothers were!
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My husband used to think I was a prepping nut until things started going south in our country. This year he’s helped in my garden, helped can, even purchased pigs (although under initial protest) and purchased a water system. I think his eyes have been opened finally. He even bought me a green house for my birthday. I think as things change a lot more people will have their eyes opened.
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Oh my gosh! I would think the sky was getting ready to part if I was ever able to bring home piggies! 😂 Congratulations! What a great birthday gift!!
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If I may … Here’s a bit of old age wisdom.
I have seen this type question arise many many times over the years.
I can give you an answer that I personally have seen work 100% of the time in the cases I was witness to.
Quite Simply …. PRAYER & PATIENCE-
YES SIR, Art!! I have this picture hanging on my wall! It’s the patients that I need work with!! I’m very careful asking God for more patience because He will give me MORE opportunities to be patient!
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Hubs is the geek in my home too, it’s what he does to pay our bills. Someone mentioned prayer & patience, it does work! It’s how we approach the request and season it with salt, prioritizing and waiting on projects that need extra hands. Mine likes to know the whole sitch and want to debate the process–you learn with time how to get them involved. Just recent mine came around on adding more tools related to Water, Food & Shelter vs. what i call toys. Some areas we still don’t see eye to eye but as long as you keep going forward you will have joy in your soul bank and that’s keeps us happy! Take time to be playful together, that’s so important during these critical days.
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Excellent add, Wingard! And I just love the part about staying playful together!! 😍
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she is willing to participate, as long as she doesn’t have to go outside and leave the a/c,she does all the canning and preserving and storing.
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That A/C is addicting! I’ve heard of people needing to wean themselves off of it when they go off grid. Just imagine how hard it would be on some people if the grid went down all together suddenly! Maybe she could work up to being out in the heat a little at a time. Thanks for the comment!
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I’ve tried to tell those who want to go offgrid to consider passive heating and cooling. Unfortunately many think a couple more solar panels and batteries are all they need for air conditioning. That’s really only a band aid on the problem. Thoughtful building and passive systems do a lot to save on expenses like solar panels and batteries. Plus the maintenance is minimal and won’t need replacing every few years.
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this is a great point. My house is always 15 degrees cooler in the summer because of passive cooling and thermal mass.
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I’m fortunate that our home has decent solar angle but I believe it was done simply because of the terrain. The downstairs is a walkout basement and the temp there stays pretty cool even on the hottest days. The windows in the home are plentiful and well positioned so we only turn on a few lights and that’s usually only when it’s late into the evening. We also take care in what windows we open along with how much we open them. The right combination allows the hot air upstairs to escape while pulling cool air up from the downstairs. There’s a lot of passive systems I plan to add but right now there’s still much to be done with the necessary repairs.
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Couldn’t agree with you more.
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i was 12years old before i ever new what a/c was , all we had before that was a whole house attic fan, i hate a/c.
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