“...half the battle is making the home operate more efficiently.”
Excellent advice. We live in a farmhouse from 1900. While Beau has re-modeled it all from scratch, that was 30+ years ago, so we are continuing to make improvements.
One super simple thing I suggested (and he did) was to insulate the inside of the north-facing cabinet under the corner kitchen sink. The kitchen was added to the 4-square house at some point in it’s history. It sits over a crawl space. Beau cut pieces of rigid foam insulation board to fit. It’s nice and warm under there now and no more frozen kitchen sink pipes in sub-zero weather!
Such a simple thing! We also replaced all the weather seal strips around the kitchen door. Granted, the door is hard to close now, but that baby is air tight! :)
New windows are needed, but they are many, so that’s going to be a ‘few a year’ thing...until we die, LOL!
This thread is about prepping. I'm not into doomsday prepping. I'm into slow boil prepping -- I call it that because I see the left slow boiling the water to kill us instead of it being an abrupt cut off of basic needs. And for whatever reason, the Dims have chosen energy to be their main weapon to tighten the screws on us a little more, and a little more.
That's what solar is for me -- a financial defense against the Dims' warmageddon cult energy policies. For you it might not work as well in Wisconsin. But here in Alabama where we spend more energy in the year fighting the heat than we do the cold, solar is great as long as it's decentralized and as long as you do lots of homework on making sure it's feasible for your situation and, bonus points, learn how to tweak it to optimize it for your situation.