- 2 days ago
🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach: https://eliasyoder.com
By two in the afternoon in July your house has turned against you, and the cooling machine grinds all day while the bill climbs toward three and four hundred dollars a summer. But that machine is fighting a battle you never needed to fight — the heat it's battling was let in through your glass and could have been stopped at the door for almost nothing. In this one I share the way the old women cooled a house with no machine at all: stop the sun at your worst south and west windows with a cheap shiny emergency blanket taped up shiny-side-out; bank the cool of the night by opening the house after sundown and sealing it shut by morning so it holds like a cellar; shade the western glass with a sheet or a vine; and on a dry, brutal day, hang a wet sheet in the doorway. I'll tell you plainly where each trick falls short — in high humidity, in extreme heat, and for anyone whose health is sensitive to it — because the plain truth serves you better than a big promise.
📖 The whole of it — these methods and many more like it — is in my book at eliasyoder.com
Try it this week, then tell me in the
By two in the afternoon in July your house has turned against you, and the cooling machine grinds all day while the bill climbs toward three and four hundred dollars a summer. But that machine is fighting a battle you never needed to fight — the heat it's battling was let in through your glass and could have been stopped at the door for almost nothing. In this one I share the way the old women cooled a house with no machine at all: stop the sun at your worst south and west windows with a cheap shiny emergency blanket taped up shiny-side-out; bank the cool of the night by opening the house after sundown and sealing it shut by morning so it holds like a cellar; shade the western glass with a sheet or a vine; and on a dry, brutal day, hang a wet sheet in the doorway. I'll tell you plainly where each trick falls short — in high humidity, in extreme heat, and for anyone whose health is sensitive to it — because the plain truth serves you better than a big promise.
📖 The whole of it — these methods and many more like it — is in my book at eliasyoder.com
Try it this week, then tell me in the
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00By two in the afternoon in July, your house has turned against you.
00:04The rooms are close and hot, hotter inside than the shade out of doors.
00:09And the machine in the window or on the pad outside is grinding away hour after hour,
00:15fighting the heat, and at the end of the month the bill comes.
00:19And it is a cruel number, two hundred dollars, three, four for the summer months.
00:25And here is the thing that will vex you once you see it.
00:28That machine is fighting a battle you never needed to fight, mopping the floor with the
00:34faucet still running, because the heat it is fighting was let into your house in the
00:38first place, through the glass and the walls, and could have been stopped at the door for
00:44almost nothing.
00:45The old women cooled a house through the worst summers with no machine at all.
00:50And I am going to show you how they did it.
00:52So here is the thing to understand, the thing that changes how you see your whole house in
00:58summer.
00:58Your house does not heat up mostly because the outside air is hot.
01:03It heats up because the sun comes in.
01:05The sunlight pours through your windows and strikes your floors and your walls and your
01:10furniture.
01:11And those things drink up that light and turn it to heat and hold it.
01:15And the glass that let the light in will not let that heat back out.
01:19So the room fills up with it like a closed buggy left in the sun till you cannot bear to
01:25sit
01:25in it.
01:26That is the real trouble, the sun getting in and being trapped.
01:30And once you know that, the whole answer follows plain.
01:33You do not fight the heat after it is inside.
01:37You stop it at the door before it ever gets in.
01:40Stop the sun at the glass and hold the cool of the night and your house near cools itself.
01:45Quick word before we go further.
01:47My name is Esther Yoder and the old household ways handed down to me, the kind I am sharing
01:53today and a great many more besides, are far more than I could ever fit into one video.
01:59I have gathered the whole of them into a book and you will find it at EliasYoder.com.
02:05If today's tips serve you, that is where the rest of what my mother and grandmother taught
02:10me lives, all in the one place, now to the cooling.
02:14My mother did not have the word for it that the builders use, but she understood the whole
02:18of it better than any man who ever sold a cooling machine.
02:22She would say the house must be closed to the day and open to the night.
02:26And she ran her whole summer by that one rule.
02:29And we slept cool through July under a light quilt with never a machine in the house.
02:34You bank the cool of the night, she said, the way you bank money.
02:38You gather it in when it is there for the taking, and you hold tight to it when it is
02:43not.
02:44That was her wisdom, and it is the heart of everything I am about to show you.
02:48And it costs you not one cent, only the knowing and the doing.
02:53Let me give it to you in its pieces.
02:55The first piece, and the one that costs almost nothing, is stopping the sun at the worst windows.
03:01Go through your house of an afternoon, about 2 or 3 o'clock, and hold your hand near each
03:06window. And the ones that feel warm, that are pouring heat into the room, those are your
03:11trouble windows. Most often the ones that face the south and the west, where the sun beats
03:17hardest and longest. Those are the ones turning your rooms into a hot, closed box every afternoon.
03:23Now here is a cheap, modern trick that works and works well. And I will name it plainly for
03:29what it is. Not dress it up as some old, handed down thing, for it is not. It is a
03:34thrifty
03:35use of a new material. At the dollar store, in with the camping things, they sell those
03:40thin, shiny emergency blankets, the metal-looking sheets folded small, for a dollar or so each.
03:46Buy a few. Tape one up over the inside of each trouble window, the shiny side facing out toward
03:52the sun, with masking tape, or the painter's tape that peels off clean. That thin, shiny
03:58sheet bounces the sun's heat back out through the glass, before it can strike your floor
04:03and turn to heat in your room. And here is why that beats the curtains and the blinds
04:07you already have, which is worth understanding. A curtain or a blind does not stop the heat.
04:13It only stands in the way of the light, and drinks the heat up itself. And then, that warmed
04:19curtain, that hot blind, sits there in your room and gives the heat right back off into
04:24the air. A middleman gone warm. The blinds are worst, for the slats turn into so many
04:30little hot plates. But the shiny sheet does not drink the heat. It turns it back, out through
04:36the glass before it ever gets in. You can still see out around it well enough, and from the
04:42street it only looks like a tinted window. And a small bonus, that come winter, you turn those
04:47same sheets around, shiny side facing into the room. And they turn your stove's heat
04:53back inside, instead of letting it bleed out the cold glass. A dollar working both summer
04:58and winter. Now the second piece. And this is the true old heart of it. My mother's banking
05:04of the cool. And it costs nothing at all but the doing of it twice a day. Every evening, once
05:10the sun has dropped below the roof line and the outside air has begun to cool, you open the
05:15windows, and not just one or two, but windows on opposite sides of the house, so the air
05:20can travel straight through and flush the day's heat out. If you have an upstairs, open a window
05:26up high and one down low, for the hot air lifts and pours out the high window and pulls the
05:32cool air in the low one behind it. And in an hour, the whole house breathes out the heat
05:37it gathered all day, like opening the oven door after the baking is done. And you leave those
05:42windows open all the night long, and let the cool night air soak deep into everything heavy
05:47in the house, the walls, the floors, the furniture, for all of it drinks up whatever temperature
05:53surrounds it and holds it. A heavy plaster wall that has stood all night in cool air will
05:59not warm up again till long past noon the next day, even as it heats up out of doors. And
06:05then, here's the piece people miss, the piece that makes the whole thing work. You close it
06:10all up early in the morning, every window and every outside door shut by 7 or 8 o'clock,
06:16before the day's heat begins to build. You seal in the cool of the night, and your house
06:21becomes like a cellar, a cool, closed thing holding the coolness it banked overnight, while
06:26the world outside climbs toward its worst. Most folk do this exactly backward. They shut the
06:32house up tight at night with the machine grinding, and then they throw the windows open in the daytime
06:38because they want a little fresh air. And that is like putting your money in the bank at sundown
06:43and drawing it all back out at noon. You do the opposite. Open to the cool night, close
06:48to the hot day. Do that with the shiny sheets and the trouble windows, and you start each
06:53day from a cool house instead of a warm one. And the two together are far stronger than either
06:59alone.
06:59Now the third piece is shade, and this is old as anything and dear to my heart, for
07:05it is the way houses were built to stand before anyone thought to sell a machine instead.
07:09Look at any old farmhouse built long ago, and you will see it was built wise. A deep porch
07:15roof over the south wall, so the high summer sun never touches the siding. Tall trees set
07:21close on the west side to block the low, brutal sun of the late afternoon. An arbor with vines
07:27climbing by the kitchen door where a woman worked over a hot stove and needed a cool spot. None
07:32of that was for prettiness. Every bit of it was to stop the sun before it reached the wall.
07:37And a wall kept in shade stays far cooler to the touch than one the sun beats on all day.
07:42You can bring some of that back cheap. An old bed sheet rigged as an awning over a west
07:47window blocks the worst of that afternoon sun for nothing. A few garden stakes and a morning
07:53glory or a bean vine grown up them will shade a window all summer once it fills in. Even
07:58a tall tomato plant in a pot by a low window drinks up heat that would have cooked the glass.
08:06Shade stops the heat before it ever reaches the window. The shiny sheet turns back what
08:12gets through. The night air banks the cool. Each piece makes the next one stronger. And for
08:19the very worst days, the dead still afternoons, when the heat sits thick, there is one more
08:26old trick, the same one my mother used on canning day, when the stove had roared since dawn.
08:33You take a cotton sheet or a big towel, soak it in cold water, wring it out till it is
08:40damp
08:40but not dripping, and hang it across a doorway or an open window where a little air moves through.
08:47As the air passes through that wet cloth, the water dries out of it, and the drying pulls
08:54the heat right out of the air. The same as stepping wet out of the pond on a breezy day
09:00gives you a chill
09:01in July. Folk in the dry country have cooled themselves this way for ages. The settlers wrapped wet cloth
09:09round their water jugs to keep them cool crossing the plains. On a dry day, one damp sheet in a
09:16doorway
09:17can drop the feel of a room a good deal, and you wet it again every couple of hours as
09:23it dries.
09:23But I must be straight with you about that wet sheet trick, for it is only fair, and the plain
09:30truth
09:31builds more trust than a big promise. It works when the air is dry. If you live where the air
09:38hangs heavy
09:39and damp, along the gulf, or anywhere the wet sits in the air for days, the water will not dry
09:46out of the
09:47cloth fast enough to cool much, for the air is already full of water. In those damp places, lean
09:55on the shade and the shiny sheets and the banking of the night air and let the wet sheet be.
10:02And to be
10:03straight further, no cheap trick cools a house the same in every climate. Where it stays terribly hot for weeks
10:11on end,
10:12these ways will bring your house down a good deal for almost nothing, but may not carry you all the
10:19way
10:19to cool on the very worst afternoons. For those of you with a cooling machine, run a small one in
10:26a single
10:27room during only the worst hours, with all the rest of this doing its work, and you will still cut
10:34what you
10:34spend by the greater part against cooling the whole house all day. And one word of care above
10:42thrift. If anyone in your house has a weak heart, or trouble breathing, or takes medicine that makes
10:49them feel the heat, do not gamble with it in a bad spell. See a doctor about what is safe,
10:56for health
10:57comes before any saving. I am a grandmother good with a dollar, not a physician. Now think a moment about
11:05why nobody teaches you any of this anymore. Why you had to fight the heat with a costly
11:12machine instead of stopping it at the door for pennies. It is worse than a plot, for a plot at
11:19least
11:19would have to be arranged by someone. And this arranged itself with no one scheming at all.
11:27Somewhere along the way, builders and sellers found that cooling was worth far more sold to you as a machine
11:34you must run and pay for every month, then given to you as a principal you already owned.
11:41So they built the houses cheaper, without the deep porch and the shade trees, and set a machine
11:48on a concrete pad instead. There is no money in teaching you to hang a shiny sheet and open your
11:55windows
11:55at night. There is a great deal in a machine that runs all summer. And so the old knowing
12:03that every generation before ours held, how a house is made to breathe with the sun instead
12:09of fighting it, just stopped being handed down, mother to daughter, within a single lifetime.
12:16Not because it was disproven, for it works as well as it ever did, but because it stopped being
12:22profitable to anyone but you. The mending of it is in your own two hands, this very week,
12:30and it costs you a few dollars at the most. You hang the shiny sheets in the trouble windows,
12:36you open the house to the cool of the night, and close it against the heat of the day.
12:42You throw a little shade on the worst western glass, and on a dry, bad day, you hang a wet
12:49sheet
12:49in the doorway. And you start banking the cool, the way my mother did. And you watch your house
12:55hold its coolness deep into the afternoon, while the bill you used to dread shrinks away
13:01to near nothing. That is how it comes home. One shaded window, one cool banked night at a time.
13:09The keeping of your own house, back in your own hands, and off the meter.
13:14So here is what I would ask of you. This very week, not next month, hang a few of those
13:21sheets
13:21in your hottest windows, and open your house to the night air. And then come back and tell me
13:27in the comments how much cooler it held by afternoon, and what your summer bill has been.
13:33For I read every one, and I do love to hear it worked. And tell me too your county, and
13:40the age of your house.
13:41For the old houses were built wise for their own country, and the climates differ so.
13:47And I learn from every one of you how the heat and the damp run where you live.
13:52And if your own mother or grandmother had a way of keeping a house cool that I have not named
13:58here,
13:59tell me that most of all. For that is how this goes. We share what we were given.
14:04And every way passed along is one more thing they cannot charge us for.
14:10Next time I will show you how the old houses were kept warm through the winter for next to nothing.
14:16The same wisdom turned the other way, closing to the cold and gathering what warmth the day gives.
14:23There is a right and an old way to live with the sun and the seasons, instead of fighting them
14:29with a meter running.
14:31And almost none of it costs a thing. But this week you start with the windows.
14:36You hang the shiny sheets against the afternoon sun. You open the house to the cool night and shut it
14:43tight by morning.
14:44You shade the worst of the western glass, and you bank the cool the way the old women did.
14:50And you will understand, as my mother did through every summer of her life, that you never had to fight
14:57the heat once it was inside.
14:58You had only to stop it at the door and hold the cool of the night.
15:03And that the machine and its cool bill were never the only way.
15:08The house kept the plain old way is the one that remembers how our grandmothers lived cool through the hottest
15:15summers,
15:15with a deep porch, a shade tree, and an open window at night.
15:20And that is a thing we are only just starting to remember.
15:24Let's take a look just a bit.
15:24Let's take a look.
15:24We are in the same room for our loved ones.
15:24You are trying to pick a heart encountered from the windows.
Comments