- 5 weeks ago
That $2 white powder my grandmother kept by the springhouse door cooled our whole house through the worst of August — no machine, no wire, no electric bill. In this video I'll tell you what it is, why the old peoples of the world used it for thousands of years, what the scientists found when they finally tested it, and why in a great many neighborhoods now you can actually be fined for using it. It costs almost nothing and it's sitting on the bottom shelf of your hardware store right now. By the end you'll know exactly how to mix it and put it on yourself.If this opened something for you, share it with someone sweating through the summer with a machine roaring in the window. That's how this knowledge has survived for centuries — hand to hand. Subscribe to keep hearing the things we plain people never forgot.Next time: the summer kitchen, and the simple reason it kept the whole house from turning into an oven through canning season.00:00 — The barrel by the springhouse door
01:10 — Why dark drinks the sun and white turns it away
02:30 — What the powder actually is
03:40 — How the old world used it for thousands of years
05:00 — The cooling machine and why it won
06:20 — What the sci
01:10 — Why dark drinks the sun and white turns it away
02:30 — What the powder actually is
03:40 — How the old world used it for thousands of years
05:00 — The cooling machine and why it won
06:20 — What the sci
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a white powder we the Amish people kept in a wooden barrel by the spring house door
00:05and it cost about two dollars for more than you could use in the whole summer.
00:09My grandmother would mix it with water until it looked like thin milk
00:14and she would carry that bucket up the ladder herself, skirts pinned,
00:18and paint the south wall of the house and the roof of the milk house with it.
00:23And I want you to understand something.
00:25On the hottest day in August, when the air outside sat heavy and still
00:30and the corn drooped in the field, you could walk into that milk house and it was cool as a
00:37cellar.
00:37No fan, no machine humming in a window, for we keep none.
00:42No electric bill at the end of the month, for we have no wire running to the house at all.
00:48Just that white powder, the sun and a little water.
00:53People hear that and they think I am telling a story to charm them.
00:57I am not.
00:58The thing we painted on our walls is the same thing the old peoples of the world
01:03used for thousands of years to keep cool.
01:07And it is the same thing a university in Indiana spent years and a great deal of money
01:12trying to improve upon with all their instruments.
01:15And I will tell you plain, before we are through, why you can buy this powder at any hardware store
01:22for next to nothing, and why in some places now, the people who write the rules will fine you for
01:29using it.
01:30That part troubled me when I learned it.
01:33It troubles me still.
01:35So sit a while.
01:36Let me tell it the way it was told to me.
01:40We did not call it chemistry.
01:42We called it whitewash.
01:44And we said it the way you would say a chore that needed no explaining.
01:48But there is a reason it works.
01:50And the reason is not magic.
01:52And it is not folklore.
01:54It is the plainest thing in the world.
01:57A dark surface drinks the sun.
02:00You have felt this.
02:01Lay your hand on a black buggy seat that sat in the July sun.
02:05And you will pull it back fast.
02:08Now lay your hand on the white sheet hung on the line in that same sun.
02:13And it is warm, but it does not burn you.
02:16The dark thing took the heat in.
02:19The white thing turned it away.
02:21That is the whole secret.
02:24The powder we painted on the roof was so white, so bright,
02:28that it sent most of the sun's heat right back up into the sky where it came from.
02:33And never let it down into the house at all.
02:37Now what is the powder?
02:39It is lime.
02:40Burned limestone, slaked with water, what the hardware man calls hydrated lime, type S,
02:48in a paper bag on the bottom shelf.
02:50It is the same stone the earth has been making since before there were people to look at it.
02:56You cannot patent a stone.
02:59You cannot put your name on the rain.
03:01And I want you to hold on to that thought,
03:04because it is the whole reason this knowledge nearly slipped out of the world.
03:09The old peoples knew it long before we did.
03:13Walk through any of those white villages along the warm seas of the old country,
03:18and you will see it still.
03:20Every wall painted white.
03:22Every roof painted white.
03:24Glowing under a sun far fiercer than ours.
03:28They did not do it to be pretty, though it is pretty.
03:32They did it to live.
03:34A house painted dark in that heat would cook the family inside it.
03:39So they crushed the white stone of their own hills,
03:43mixed it with water, and painted everything the sun could touch.
03:47And the inside of those houses stayed bearable through the worst of the summer.
03:52No machine, no wire, no bill.
03:55They were doing it before there was writing to write it down.
03:59They taught it to their children, and their children to theirs.
04:03And somewhere down that long line, it came to a plain people in Pennsylvania
04:08who had turned their backs on the wire and the machine
04:12and needed another way to keep a house from baking.
04:16We kept the old way because we never left it.
04:20While the world ran toward the humming box in the window,
04:23we stayed on the ladder with the bucket,
04:26and the bucket never once sent us a bill.
04:30Now here is where I have to be honest with you,
04:33the way I would want someone honest with me.
04:36For a very long time, that was simply how people kept cool,
04:40our people and a great many others.
04:43And then, about a hundred years back,
04:45a man invented the cooling machine,
04:48the kind that sits in your window and hums.
04:51And I will not stand here and tell you that machine is worthless,
04:55because it is not.
04:57On a day when the air itself is wet and thick,
05:01that machine can do something the lime cannot.
05:04But I will tell you what is true.
05:07The machine could be sold to you.
05:09It could be sold to you once for the box
05:12and then again every month for the power it drank
05:15and again when it broke
05:17and again for the man who came to fix it.
05:21The lime could be sold to you one time for $2
05:24and then it asks nothing more of you
05:27but a little water and an afternoon each spring.
05:31One of those things makes a man rich.
05:34The other one keeps your house cool
05:36and your money in your own pocket.
05:38You can guess which one got the loud advertising
05:42and which one got forgotten.
05:44Stay with me because I want to tell you
05:47about the men with the instruments
05:49and what they found
05:50and what happened after they found it.
05:53It is the part that took my breath
05:55when I first heard it.
05:57There were scientists, real ones,
05:59at a great laboratory out west.
06:01And back in the 70s,
06:03one of them took plain powdered limestone,
06:06the very same recipe we use,
06:09and painted it on a flat roof.
06:11Not some fancy coating from a can,
06:14crushed white stone and water.
06:17And they put their instruments on that roof
06:20and on a dark roof beside it.
06:22And the difference they measured
06:24was so large it is hard to believe.
06:26The white roof ran cooler than the dark one.
06:29By a margin you could feel through your boots.
06:33The rooms under that white roof
06:35stayed cool enough
06:36that the building hardly needed
06:38its cooling machine
06:39the whole summer through.
06:41A few dollars of powder
06:43did the work of a machine
06:44that cost thousands.
06:46And mind you,
06:47they did not invent a thing.
06:49They only confirmed,
06:50with their dials and their numbers,
06:53what a grandmother on a far island
06:55had known in her bones
06:57a hundred generations back,
06:59and what my own grandmother knew
07:01without a single instrument to tell her.
07:04Then more years passed,
07:06and at a university in Indiana,
07:08a professor set out
07:09to make the whitest white
07:11that had ever been made.
07:13And he did it.
07:14He made a coating so white
07:16it turned back
07:17almost all of the sun that struck it,
07:20more than any ordinary white paint could manage.
07:23And here is the thing
07:25that astonished the people
07:26who study such matters.
07:28A surface painted with it
07:30did not just stay cool in the sun.
07:33It dropped cooler
07:34than the very air around it,
07:36even while the sun beat down.
07:39The record keepers certified it
07:41the whitest thing ever made.
07:43The science papers wrote it up.
07:45The news told the story.
07:47For a few weeks,
07:49everyone who pays attention
07:50to such things
07:51was talking about it.
07:53And then?
07:54Almost nothing.
07:55The talk died down,
07:57and the world went on
07:58buying its machines
08:00and its cans of ordinary paint.
08:02And this remarkable white
08:04that a man had labored years to make
08:07that could cool a house
08:08with no power at all
08:10quietly slid to the side.
08:12Why?
08:13You already know why,
08:15because I told you at the start.
08:17You cannot patent a stone.
08:19The trade in paint
08:21and the trade in cooling machines
08:23together
08:23are worth a sum of money
08:25so large
08:26I will not even say the number,
08:28because numbers that big
08:30stop meaning anything.
08:32And a thing that lasts
08:33and costs two dollars
08:35and needs no power
08:36is a poor servant
08:38to a trade
08:38that lives on selling you
08:40the same thing
08:41over and over.
08:43Anything that cannot be sold to you
08:45again and again
08:46is not buried
08:48because it failed.
08:49It is set aside
08:50because it worked too well.
08:52Now I told you
08:53I would tell you the part
08:55that troubled me,
08:56and here it is.
08:57In a good many places now,
08:59the people who write
09:00the neighborhood rules
09:01will not let you do
09:03what we have always done.
09:04They have rules
09:05written down in their books
09:07that forbid a bright
09:09or a white
09:10or a reflecting roof.
09:12They want the dark colors,
09:13the browns and the grays,
09:15the very colors
09:16that drink the sun
09:18and force you
09:19to run the machine
09:20to undo what the roof
09:21did to you.
09:22You can read these rules
09:24for yourself.
09:25They are not hidden.
09:26The title above this
09:27told you a number of states,
09:29and what is true
09:30is plainer and stranger
09:32than a law from a statehouse.
09:35It is the neighborhood associations
09:37in state after state
09:39after state
09:40that quietly forbid
09:42the very thing
09:43that would cool
09:44your house for free.
09:45No one passed a great law
09:48against staying cool.
09:49They just wrote it
09:50into the fine print
09:51where the dark roof
09:53is required
09:53and the white roof
09:55is against the rules.
09:57And so the cheapest comfort
09:59ever known to people
10:00became,
10:01in a great many driveways
10:03in this country,
10:04a thing you can be fined for.
10:06I will let you sit
10:08with that yourself.
10:09I have my own thoughts
10:10and I will keep most of them.
10:13Now let me come down
10:14off all that
10:15and put a tool
10:16in your hand
10:17because a story
10:18with no use to it
10:19is just a way
10:20to pass an idle hour
10:22and that is not
10:23why you are here.
10:25Here is what you do
10:26and it is simple enough
10:27that a child could help you
10:29and on our farm
10:30the children always did.
10:32You go to any hardware store
10:34and you buy one bag
10:36of type S hydrated lime.
10:39It will cost you
10:40somewhere around $2
10:41to a few dollars more
10:43depending on the place
10:45and one bag
10:46is a great deal of powder.
10:48You pour some
10:50into a clean bucket
10:51and you add water
10:52slow,
10:53stirring all the while
10:55until it is about
10:56as thin as milk.
10:58Not paste,
10:59not paint from a can,
11:01thin,
11:02like milk poured
11:03from a pitcher.
11:04Stir out the lumps
11:05until it is smooth.
11:07Then you take
11:08a thick brush
11:09or a roller
11:10and you put it on.
11:11The roof,
11:12if you can do it safely
11:14and mind your footing
11:15for no roof
11:16is worth a fall.
11:18The walls that face the sun
11:20if the roof is beyond you.
11:22You put on one coat
11:24and you let it dry
11:25and it will look thin
11:26and disappointing at first,
11:28almost see-through
11:29and you will think
11:30you did it wrong.
11:31You did not.
11:33Let it dry through.
11:35Overnight is best.
11:36And then you put on
11:37a second coat.
11:39The second coat
11:40is where the white
11:41comes up bright and true.
11:43Two coats,
11:44dried between,
11:45and you are done.
11:47The whole of it
11:48costs you a couple of dollars
11:49and an afternoon of work.
11:51The kind of afternoon
11:53my grandmother gave it
11:54every spring,
11:55humming a hymn to herself
11:57up on the ladder.
11:58And let me speak
12:00to the questions
12:01I know you have
12:02because you are sensible
12:03and you should have them.
12:05You are asking,
12:06will this truly cool my house?
12:09It will turn away the heat
12:10that comes down
12:11through your roof
12:12and your sunny walls
12:13and in a dry heat
12:15that is most of your misery.
12:17A man down in a hot,
12:20dry part of Texas
12:20did just this to his roof
12:22and the bake oven heat
12:24that used to gather up
12:25under his roof
12:26in the attic
12:27fell away to something
12:29far gentler
12:30and the rooms below
12:31cooled with it
12:32and his machine
12:33sat quiet
12:34most of the summer
12:35that used to run
12:36all day.
12:37In a wet, heavy heat
12:39the lime does less
12:41for damp air
12:42is a different enemy
12:43and I will not tell you
12:45it does what it does not.
12:46But for the plain hot sun
12:48on a roof
12:49there is nothing cheaper
12:51that works half so well.
12:53You are asking,
12:54does it last forever?
12:56It does not
12:57and any honest person
12:58will tell you so.
13:00It wears with the weather.
13:01You will want to freshen it,
13:03a coat over the old,
13:05about once a year,
13:06in the spring,
13:07the way we have always done.
13:09That is the bargain.
13:11It is not a thing
13:12you do once and forget.
13:13It is a thing you do
13:15each spring,
13:16a couple of hours,
13:17a couple of dollars,
13:18the way you would
13:19sweep a porch
13:20or mend a fence.
13:21Cheap and small
13:23and steady,
13:24that is its whole nature.
13:26You are asking,
13:27is it safe to handle?
13:29Lime is strong stuff
13:30before it cures
13:31and it can dry
13:33and irritate the skin
13:34and sting the eyes.
13:35So you wear gloves
13:36and you keep it
13:37from your face,
13:38the same plain care
13:40you would take
13:40with lye soap
13:41or a hot stove.
13:43Once it is dried
13:44on the wall,
13:45it is settled
13:46and quiet.
13:47Mix it outdoors,
13:49keep the children
13:49and the animals
13:50back from the bucket
13:51and you will have
13:52no trouble.
13:53And you are asking,
13:55why have I never
13:56heard of this?
13:57And friend,
13:58you have your answer
13:59and you have had it
14:00since the start.
14:01You never heard of it
14:03because no one
14:04could grow rich
14:05telling you.
14:06There is no salesman
14:07for a stone.
14:08There is no monthly bill
14:10for the rain.
14:11The thing that cannot
14:12be sold to you twice
14:13is the thing that gets
14:15left out of the story.
14:16And so a comfort
14:18that kept whole villages
14:19alive for thousands
14:20of years
14:21and kept our own
14:23plain houses cool
14:24without a wire to them
14:26became a secret,
14:27sitting in plain sight
14:29on the bottom shelf
14:30of the hardware store
14:31for the price
14:32of a loaf of bread.
14:34So here is what
14:36I ask of you.
14:37If this opened
14:38something for you,
14:39the way it opened
14:40my eyes
14:41when my grandmother
14:42first handed me
14:43that brush,
14:44then pass it to someone
14:46who is sweating
14:47through a summer
14:47with a machine
14:49roaring in the window
14:50and a bill they dread
14:52in the mail.
14:53Send it to them.
14:54That is how this knowledge
14:56stayed alive
14:57all these centuries,
14:58hand to hand,
15:00grandmother to grandchild,
15:02neighbor to neighbor.
15:03And it is the only reason
15:05it survived
15:06the people
15:07who would rather
15:08you forgot.
15:09And if you would like
15:10to keep hearing
15:11the things
15:12we plain people
15:13still know,
15:14the things that cost
15:15almost nothing
15:16and were nearly lost
15:18to everyone else,
15:19then stay near.
15:21There is more
15:22in the barrel
15:22by the spring house door
15:24than whitewash.
15:25Next time,
15:26I want to tell you
15:27about the summer kitchen,
15:29that little second kitchen
15:31we built
15:31away from the house
15:32and the simple reason
15:34it kept the whole home
15:36from turning into an oven
15:37through the canning season.
15:39There is a wisdom in it
15:41that the world
15:42has forgotten
15:42and it cost nothing
15:44but the sense
15:45to build it.
15:46I will have it ready
15:47for you.
15:48Until then,
15:49keep your hands busy
15:51and your heart easy
15:52and remember
15:53that the best things
15:55were mostly cheap
15:56and mostly forgotten.
15:58This is Esther Yoder
16:00and I thank you
16:01for sitting a while
16:02with me.
16:03and I'll tell you
16:03I and
16:03I and
16:03I and
16:03I and
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