Steve Zoma

I have had a lot of land and a little, going from a 400 acre farm here in New England to only 1 acre now. Both had their good points and bad. The bad on land ownership is the property taxes, what started out as a few thousand per year neared $19,000 towards the end. How is a farmer going to pay for that EVERY YEAR and also live? The land itself won’t provide that much cash because every other large landowner is looking to do the same thing with their land. If you get a niche market, the next year you got a crowded market from copy cats.

I sold out when the market was high and found an old Victorian home on a river with barn for $180,000 in 2023 prices. Here is the kicker: it is surrounded by conservation land. I cannot cut trees granted but I can scavenge food on 2500 acres without paying a dollar in taxes and will never have more neighbors than I have now. 4 currently.

The point is people looking for land should think outside the box. Paul did with his kickstarter efforts and such, and I found a fixer upper near conservation land. It can be done but it might not look like what others have, and that’s okay. Your ideal spot does not have to be another persons idea of a perfect place.

Recently I finished my fictional novel on a Permies type of Thriller Novel and that was the premise of the book: no regrets, make what you do have work instead of expending energy and thoughts on what you don’t have.

It is what it is…

Okay, so how could it ever be what it’s not?

Here is an idea, TAKE THE SHIP TO PORT CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!! Of course it is what it is!

What a stupid saying!!!

I do not burn wood, but if I did it would be around 12 full cords per year.

A full cord of firewood is equal to about 100 gallons of heating oil. Since I burn 1100 gallons of oil and a little propane, if I switched to firewood I would consume about 12 cord.

Just adding this in case someone wants to do the conversion.

For voltmeters my recommendation is twofold; to keep it very simple and to buy Fluke.

As an electrician I have messed up a lot of stuff, got a lot of erroneous readings, chased down phantom issues all because the Fluke Meter at work was WAY overcomplicated. With so many options it is very easy to choose the wrong setting! This results in phantom problems.

At work I have many Fluke Meters, but the one I use the most is the most simple. So why do I use the overcomplicated one and make mistakes? Because our powerplant has 103 steps from top to bottom and no elevator and I get lazy with all those steps and use what I have instead of going to get the simple, better Fluke meter.

For a household, the wiring is very limited and simple is all you need.

Instead of buying a Fluke Meter that does so much, like reading amps of a DC battery, just buy a cheap battery tester for automotive batteries. Its not like you will ever need to check the amperage flow on the DC side of the exciter motor operated potentiometer at your house. Keep it simple so settings mistakes are reduced. To that end, get a Voltage Sniffer. They are simple, cheap devices but I use mine at home and work all the time.

At work we only use Fluke. We are not even allowed by company policy to use another brand. In fact we do not even call them voltage meters but rather, "I need the Fluke", referring it by brand name only.

I have a big three story house and I have been playing around with heat migration a lot. A single door has netted me huge gains, but recently a blanket hung in a stair well billowed in so fast, so deep and by its sheer amount of suction I could see how much air was moving up to the third floor. Its enough so that the third floor, while unheated by any appliance stays warm.

Since I cannot stop the heat from going up the staircases without some ugly remedies, I plan to recirculate the heat gathering up the third floor staircase and by ductwork, send it back down to the first floor. Utilizing a fan in the ductwork to drive the heat back down, because of how my house is built, this is a very easy, inexpensive option.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:My current issue is my washer is not spinning. Bellow video tells me that I may need a voltimeter. At 8 minutes in, "Teknishun" tests the capacitor, and says voltimeter needs to read... something.

If you have a top loader it probably has nothing to do with your washers electronics. A common fail point is the plastic pawls that ratchet the drum around for agitation. The cost about $3 US Currency and is a super easy fix. I think the single bolt you need to remove is 7/16 but you will need every extension you have to reach it down the tube of your drum. Just pop the cap off your tube, reach down inside, take off the bolt and pull your drum out. Replace the worn plastic pawls and reinstall the drum.

A lot of people go out and buy a new clothes washer for a $3 plastic part.

If you have a front loader... call a repairman!

I just live my life as I see fit, doing as much as I can for myself, and as my skill set and experience has grown, what I can accomplish has increased.

I do not boast about it, nor am I showy, and now that I can buy whatever I want the truth is I don’t care about buying it. I wish my wife had a more minimalist mindset but that’s okay she has endearing qualities so I just let that go. I can only control certain things in my grasp and anything else is just a waste of my time.

I know my thoughts are not mine alone, nor my lifestyle, but I know it won’t be popular or mainstream either.

People can do whatever they want that floats their boat, just don’t sink mine in getting there.

I said a few months ago that I was working on a Permie Fictional Novel and I was able to finish it over the weekend. I was able to get it printed but now need to do some more editing on some first print mistakes I saw, but just following up with my previous posts that this story is now in book form and not just a hope or dream.

Buyers can use USDA loans to their advantage though.

One thing I look for is houses that have been on the market for over 60 days. That is kind of the line in the sand that tells you if a house is sellable or not. If an occupied house is over that 60 days, it most likely was a USDA loan that fell through. This means the seller is most likely despondent that a sale fell through, and highly motivated to sell the house. As a buyer you can search these houses out, and then put in a low offer for the home.

Once the offer is accepted, it is in your best interest to get a very reputable home inspector and do a thorough inspection of the place to figure out why the house did not pass the previous inspection. It might be as simple as some electrical work that needs to be done, or more often, septic work. It then becomes up to you if the house is worth moving forward on, but at least by then you are locked into a price. I say septic work because that is a test requirement of a USDA loan that most other lenders do not require.

One house I will not even consider though.... is a house with a drooped roofline. That tells me the foundation is bad and the house is not repairable. It is just a fast, intelligent way to weed out problems when buying low value houses.