The trifecta of heating and cooling. Insulation, thermal mass and minisplit. My cost for heating and air conditioning last year was $348 for the year. We do not have any supplemental heat source. The house in ICF with lots of insulation in the attic.

So on a funny note. We have two coops on opposite sides of the yard. So the newest coop has a rooster who's been getting more and more aggressive. He's attacked my wife and she enters the coop witha PVC pipe in hand to whack him. The rooster attacked my mother today and she went down to the coop seveal times today for hte hell of it just to chase him around with a flyswatter. I mean like "well I'm finished with this cup of coffee, I think it's time to whack the rooster". Then she chased him into an old pen we used for the goats and left the hens and another rooster out in the barn yard. He was pacing frantically along the goat pen and never realized he could fly UP. He has pecked (lol picked) on the wrong old lady this time.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ECWE4WC Here are super cheap FRS radios. They are SIMPLE to operate. Sure you can get a baofeng UV5R but it's far too easy to knock off frequency. These radios are so cheap you can gift them to the neighbors. You can change frequencies by turning the knob all the way clockwise and counting clicks to channel 16.

A few days ago I mentioned a group channel vs each neighbor having their own channel. It's worth pointing out that radios have a battery saver mode where they wake up every 2-5 seconds and check to see if the channel is in use. This greatly extends battery life. But if you have a radio scanning a bunch of frequencies, it can't take advantage of the battery saver. This is why a group frequency is good. You can monitor and save battery life.

Why not have the radio on two channels like I run a group channel and a family channel and then have a plug in one that constantly scans to save the batteries

A word about baofeng programming cables. Back when USB first came out, a company named Prolific released a USB to serial chip. THey forgot to read-protect the code on the chip and the chinese copied the hell out of it. So prolific asked windows to black list that chipset. But the chinese still sell them and they work with linux and mac but not with windows. So if you see a baofeng programming cable that's $5 it won't work with windows. Once you get to hte "high" price of $20 these cables use FDTI chipsets and they work like a dream.

How to build a rope ladder
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I had a hiccup with my power company Duke /Progress last year where they stopped recording the power I sent them and said my net metering agreement had run out. (this is the short version). They continued to /not/ bill me for power until December when they discovered they hadn't billed me for power I'd bought... and they hadn't credited me for power I'd sold. They dinged me for $1200. I got yanked around by them and finally got the Public Service Commission involved and they fixed it. But I'm going to reconfigure my system to sell only a limited amont of power and only pull from the grid when I would otherwise need to run a generator. That shouldn't be too often.

I'm reading an article I came across in a rather cynical manner. It seems a lot of organizations are creating solar farms and wind farms only to have the utility companies jack up the price of interconnect. I smell a rat.

You see, power companies are in the business of selling power. The last thing they want is for other competitors to enter the system. I'm reading about a wind farm that was told the interconnect would cost $5m for equipment and two years later were told they needed $48M on 15 days notice. Seems like supression of competition to me.

On the other hand, the utility co in California now requires you to pay fees for your roof top solar that take up all the money the panels make. And further, they require you to buy any power at on peak rates if you have solar. So they are creating a situation where it is actually better for you to just buy batteries and not sell power.

Here is a CHIRP compatible list of ham repeaters, GMRS and FRS frequencies in South Carolina. Repeaters with SCH in the name are SC Hearts network. SC Hearts is a group of linkable repeaters that extend up in to NC. Note all of the repeaters are in alpha order by city name.

I would encourage you folks in other states to create the same sorts of files.

I also read in the book "Going Home" about placing rotting meat in an upside down bucket hanging from a tree. Flies lay eggs, maggots fall to the ground and chickens love it.

Chicken 🐔 food

Baofeng BF-888 radios are dirt cheap. But out of the box they are not on FRS frequencies. This is a good or a bad thing. The good thing is you've got your own quiet channels. The bad thing is the channels are not for unlicensed use. You can use a baofeng programming cable to reprogram them.

Saw this subject on the main page been meaning comment.

A good upgrade from the Baofeng is the Wouxun KG-UV9D Plus. It's a true dual band so you can set it up to work as a crossband repeater. I use mine to hit the FM satellites.

It too comes with some of the channels locked out due to FCC rules, but the software is not hard to find to open it up. I run mine on FRS/GMRS.

The great thing about the Baofeng is if you have your ticket you can hit repeaters. Here in Commifornia I can hit the whole valley on a couple channels. A talkie is really only as good as line of sight without the repeater.

The GMRS license is no test. Advantage of having it is you can operate at higher power and you can operate GMRS repeater. But the GMRS repeater is low power (50W) compared to HAM.

When I'm prospecting I have a radio setup I run in my truck at the top of the hill that operates as repeater so I can communicate with camp.

HAM ticket is easy unless you are the kind of person who locks up during a test. Look up HAM Cram in your area. Usually put on by local HAM clubs. It's a short term memory trick to get you to pass. The day of the test you go over the question pool and highlight the correct answer, reread it a couple of times, in sections. take the test at the end of the day. 98% success rate in my group. I have found it is better if you don't study.

Wow... Imagine osha getting involved and workers not able to work over 80F. Could affect construction, paper mills, and farmers.