Here's a few things I did. Just as a quick background I have a 1947 cape cod. There is no insulation in my exterior walls. I had less than 2" of batts insulation in my attic crawlspace above the 2nd floor bedrooms. I had no insulation in the side crawl spaces either. I heat with electric Mitsubishi heat pumps that do both heat and ac. They work amazingly well for ac but when it gets down to about 12F they don't work for heat. Of course I bought these units right before they came out with the hyper heat ones which work in lower temps. So here's what I did - 1. Removed all garbage insulation in the crawl space above 2nd floor. Can't stand up there. Had to do it on my butt and knees. 2. Sealed all openings in the ceiling above 2nd floor - holes for electrical wires, chase for the 4" waste stack, and all crevices where the top plate of the wall beneath was visible. Used spray foam in a can from HD. 3. Blew in 18" of all-borate cellulose insulation. That's R60. 4. Insulated the side crawl spaces with R19 on the rafters and installed air gap baffles first. On top of that I installed 3/4" foil isocyanate foam board. Sealed with foil tape. Spray foamed large gaps. 5. Installed 2" foam blocks where the roof line meets the joists. I only have 2 gable vents - no soffit and therefore no soffit vents. Sealed with spray foam. This prevents air from sliding down the room and traveling through the joist bays. This made an immediate impact. That night I was able to sleep in my bedroom upstairs with the windows open and no AC. No longer was the summer heat baking through the ceiling and heating the upper floor. Before when I had central air (ripped all of it out) I only had one zone. The upstairs would always be hot in the summer like an oven and in the winter it would always be cold. Now there is a 1-2 degree difference and I cannot stress how much of a difference the air sealing and insulation made. Regarding wood, I don't know how you get your wood.......but if I were you I'd do what I did. I made friends initially with ONE tree service guy. This guy turned out to be a real genuinely nice guy - generous, reliable, and knowledgeable. Round these parts he has to pay $250 a truckload just to dump his wood at the dump...where it rots away and gets wasted. He's come to my house at least a dozen times. I've saved him ~$3000 in dumping fees. Slowly but surely I ended up making friends with more tree service guys....and even went as far as to call a few companies whose trucks I had seen. As an aside, none of those calls resulted in any wood. However, I had several tree services stop and come talk to ME because they saw my wood stacks. I've gotten probably close to 40 cords of wood now......all for free. Granted, I had to buy a chainsaw, splitter, axes, gear, etc.........but some quick math here - a cord of (crappy) wood delivered here is $300.......So that's $12,000 of money saved on wood and I've probably spent a few thousand by now on the stuff I bought to process the wood. If you can get in touch with one or two guys that can consistently drop off nice quality wood already bucked to ~16" (my preference)......you're way ahead of the game and it's easy street from there. If you've got 20 acres, you have plenty of room I would imagine to store as much wood as you can handle. I use 4 pallets per holz hausen and I'm only on half an acre.......with 18 stacks, 6 IBC totes, and a dozen or so 44 gallon garbage cans.....and a tiny garage to store all my tools. Even if you get more rounds than you can split.......this might get you ahead of the game. Maybe come home from work and split for 30-60 minutes....do a little bit at a time.....have a party.....invite friends over to help split with you. That's what I do. I even give them the option to take away as much wood as they can it in their vehicles.....after they help me split and stack my wood........ With a supersplit......you should be able to process the wood way faster than me. I do it by hand 90% and the crotchy knotties I leave for the hydraulic. Going back to the first tree guy - he's the guy that came with my ash load a few days ago.......and he had the bucket truck.....and removed a whole bunch of danglers and widowmakers from the storm we had over a month ago.....And he cut down a huge limb......no charge to me. It pays to be nice. I help him out, he helps me out....and I even went to work for him one day when a couple guys called out sick. At the end of the day he started counting bills out to pay me.....and I told him I'm good......put that money away....... I've also gone and scrounged a little bit here and there....bucking my own logs and transporting it back home (initially in my Sienna which was such a hassle!) but that doesn't even account for 5% of my haul. It was more for fun and the experience. Hope this gave you some ideas........and hope your son gets better soon.
95% of my wood comes from standing trees I harvest, or deadfall I harvest. I have never once bought firewood, log length, or had wood dropped off at my house. I wish. The other 5% is logs we score. We still have to go get them, and load them with our equipment, like this score. A bunch more Red Oak As for the GTG, I menat I was willing to go to one to help someone out. Im caught up with my wood, but if there is enough interest, I'd be willing to host one.
I'm good here now but thank you. I plugged away and have 7 cord put up now. The house projects are the front burner now. Wood stove install is the end of October. As hard as some days may be, I just have to keep at it. A small GTG would be fun. Just to meet up and eat. Drop a tree or two. sirbuildalot , good for staying with it.
It's a lot of work to get the 3 years established. Once there, it's just backfilling what's been used. Congrats!!
