- 1 day ago
A $10 bucket of salt is not the winter heating trick it claims to be, and this calm, practical narration explains why. Elias Yoder walks through the idea, the math, and the old household methods that actually helped Amish and other northern families stay warm without wasting heat.
The video compares rock salt with water, explains why a person in bed is already a small heat source, and shows how bedroom warmth is lost to the ceiling when the room itself is heated all night. From there it moves into real home-saving methods: closed bedrooms, layered bedding, hot water bottles, sleeping caps, wool sleepwear, and the old box-bed idea used in parts of Europe. It also includes safety notes about ventilation, cold rooms, babies, and older adults.
If you enjoy Amish living, frugal home heating, old-fashioned winter survival, practical homestead advice, and narrated educational commentary, this is a strong listen. It is also useful for anyone searching for bedroom insulation tips, heat-saving ideas, or traditional ways to stay warm at night.
Created for viewers interested in Amish home-saving methods, winter heating tips, traditional bedroom warmth, old-world homestead living, and practical narration about saving heat without expensive equipment. It fits searches for frugal living, cold-weather comfort, and historical home efficiency.
The video compares rock salt with water, explains why a person in bed is already a small heat source, and shows how bedroom warmth is lost to the ceiling when the room itself is heated all night. From there it moves into real home-saving methods: closed bedrooms, layered bedding, hot water bottles, sleeping caps, wool sleepwear, and the old box-bed idea used in parts of Europe. It also includes safety notes about ventilation, cold rooms, babies, and older adults.
If you enjoy Amish living, frugal home heating, old-fashioned winter survival, practical homestead advice, and narrated educational commentary, this is a strong listen. It is also useful for anyone searching for bedroom insulation tips, heat-saving ideas, or traditional ways to stay warm at night.
Created for viewers interested in Amish home-saving methods, winter heating tips, traditional bedroom warmth, old-world homestead living, and practical narration about saving heat without expensive equipment. It fits searches for frugal living, cold-weather comfort, and historical home efficiency.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Three people have written to me this month about a bucket of salt.
00:04You have seen it.
00:05A plastic pail, 50 pounds of rock salt,
00:09and a promise that it will heat a room all winter with nothing plugged in.
00:15Ten dollars, and the pictures always seem to be aimed at people my age or older
00:20who are trying to keep the thermostat down.
00:23They want to know whether we use it.
00:25Whether this is one of the old ways.
00:28It is not.
00:30And I am going to settle it in about a minute,
00:32and then I am going to give you the thing that actually does work,
00:36which is what we do in this house, and which costs nothing at all.
00:41I am Elias Yoder.
00:43I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
00:46Our bedrooms are not heated.
00:48Not underheated.
00:50Not heated at all.
00:52There is a stove downstairs, and there is nothing upstairs but the cold,
00:56and the doors are shut,
00:58and on a January night the water in a glass on the sill will sometimes have ice on it by
01:04morning.
01:05And nobody in this house has ever been cold in bed.
01:09Not once, in my lifetime or my father's.
01:13That is not toughness, and it is not habit.
01:17It is that we are doing something different with the heat,
01:20and it has nothing whatever to do with how much of it there is.
01:25I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
01:30The book is the long version.
01:32If you want it, it is there.
01:34I will not mention it again.
01:36A bucket of rock salt does not heat a room.
01:41Salt holds heat rather poorly, and the whole 50 pounds of it, warmed up and allowed to cool,
01:48gives back roughly what a small electric heater puts out in about four minutes.
01:53And it has to be heated first by something, which means you have paid for every bit of it already.
02:01Plain water in that same bucket holds getting on for five times as much heat, and it comes out of
02:08your tap.
02:09That is why the hot water bottle exists, and the salt bucket does not.
02:14The salt lamp is worse again, because it is plugged in.
02:18That is a 15-watt bulb costing you money every hour it is on, and it is storing nothing.
02:26The principle underneath the bucket is sound, and it is very old.
02:31A stone hearth, a brick oven, a soapstone, a cast-iron stove, warm two hours after the fire is out.
02:40That is real, and it has a name, and people have used it for centuries.
02:46The salt is just the worst thing you could have picked to do it with.
02:50And if you have bought one, do not feel foolish.
02:54You were not being gullible.
02:56You were doing the thing that built the thriftiest generation this country ever had,
03:01which is trying the cheap idea before the expensive one.
03:06That instinct is right.
03:08It was simply pointed at the wrong bucket.
03:11So that is the bucket, and I have no more to say about it.
03:15Now here is the thing that does work, and it is a great deal older than that pail,
03:21and it costs nothing whatever.
03:24You are not short of heat in your bedroom.
03:27There is a heater in there already, running all night, costing nothing, and it is you.
03:33A person lying still gives off somewhere around 70 to 100 watts.
03:39That is more than the little bulb in one of those salt lamps people buy.
03:44It is more than five of them, all night, every night, for free.
03:50And in an ordinary bedroom, every bit of it goes straight up to the ceiling,
03:55spreads out along it, and leaves through the roof while you sleep under it.
03:59You have been heating 2,000 cubic feet in order to warm about 50.
04:05My grandmother showed me why when I was seven or eight,
04:08and she did it by taking me out to the barn.
04:11I had been complaining about my room.
04:14It was January, and I had said something about how cold it was up there,
04:19which was a thing you did not get much sympathy for in that house.
04:23She did not argue with me.
04:25She put a coat on me and took me out across the yard to the barn,
04:29and it was bitter out, and the barn was not heated either.
04:33Down in the corner there was a pen with the lambs in it,
04:37bedded deep in straw,
04:38and they were lying packed in against one another the way they do.
04:43She had me kneel down and put my hand right into the straw beside them,
04:48down where they were lying.
04:49It was warm, not cool.
04:52Warm, on a night when the water in the trough had skinned over.
04:56I looked up at her, and she asked me the question.
04:59She said,
05:00Nothing is heating this barn.
05:03So what is warming them?
05:05You are the stove.
05:07The only question is how big a room you are trying to heat with it.
05:11Now let me lay out what an Amish house actually does about a bedroom,
05:16because it is not one trick.
05:18It is six, and every one of them is free.
05:21The first is that the room is not heated, and the door is shut,
05:26and that is on purpose rather than for want of a stove.
05:30A heated bedroom is a room you are paying to keep warm,
05:34while nobody in it is awake to enjoy it.
05:37Shut the door, and that room drops to whatever it drops to,
05:41and all the heat downstairs stays downstairs where people are sitting.
05:47The second is the bed itself, which is where all the work is done.
05:51A feather tick and layers of wool on top of it.
05:55And the reason that works is not the weight, and it is not the cloth.
05:59It is the air.
06:02Wool and feathers are mostly air, held still in millions of little pockets,
06:08and still air is one of the best insulators there is.
06:12Same as the bubble wrap on the window.
06:15Same as the straw round those lambs.
06:17The blanket is not warm.
06:20The blanket holds your warmth against you, and stops it leaving.
06:24Which is why two thin blankets beat one thick one,
06:29because you have added a layer of air between them,
06:32and why a heavy quilt that has gone flat with age
06:36warms you far less than it used to, even though it weighs the same.
06:40And what goes under you matters as much as what goes over you,
06:45which almost nobody thinks about.
06:47You compress the bedding you are lying on,
06:50and compressed feathers and wool hold no air,
06:54and therefore hold no warmth.
06:56That is why a mattress on a cold floor is a miserable thing,
07:01and why the old beds stood high on legs
07:04with a rope frame and air all round them.
07:08If your bed is low or against a cold outside wall,
07:12an extra blanket underneath the sheet
07:14does more for you than another one on top.
07:17The third is warming the bed, rather than the room.
07:22Twenty minutes before anyone goes up,
07:24something warm goes in.
07:26A flat iron off the back of the stove,
07:29wrapped in flannel.
07:31A soapstone.
07:32In a great many houses now,
07:34a hot water bottle.
07:36That small amount of heat
07:38does nothing at all to a bedroom,
07:40and everything to a bed.
07:42You are not trying to change the temperature of a room.
07:45You are changing the temperature
07:47of eight inches around a pair of feet,
07:50and cold feet are most of what keeps a person awake.
07:55A word on doing that safely,
07:57since people are casual about it.
07:59Hot tap water, rather than boiling,
08:02because boiling water perishes the rubber
08:05and has scalded a great many people over the years.
08:09Fill it two-thirds,
08:11and press the air out before you cap it.
08:13Wrap it in a cloth,
08:15so it never sits against bare skin,
08:18and never leave it against one place
08:20on a sleeping person all night,
08:23particularly an older person,
08:25or anybody who does not feel heat well,
08:28because a warm bottle,
08:29held against skin for hours,
08:32can burn without waking them.
08:34And look at the bottle itself now and then.
08:37If the rubber has gone hard or tacky,
08:40or is cracking round the neck,
08:42it is finished,
08:44and they do split.
08:45The fourth is your head.
08:48Every old picture of a person in bed
08:50has a cap on,
08:52and people laugh at that now,
08:54and think it was a bit of fussiness.
08:56It was not.
08:57Your head and neck
08:59are up out of the covers all night,
09:01and that is where a great deal goes.
09:04A soft cap,
09:05or a folded scarf,
09:07costs nothing,
09:08and makes a real difference,
09:10and I am aware of how it sounds,
09:12and I am telling you to try it anyway.
09:15The fifth is what you wear to bed,
09:17and it is not what people assume.
09:20Wool, or something like it,
09:22rather than cotton.
09:24Cotton takes up the damp
09:25your body puts out through the night,
09:27and then holds it against you,
09:29and damp cloth
09:30pulls heat out of a person fast.
09:33Wool holds warmth,
09:35even when it is not perfectly dry.
09:38Bed socks are not a joke either,
09:40and a pair of them
09:41will do more for your sleep
09:43than another blanket will.
09:45And the sixth
09:45is keeping the room's own heat
09:48from leaving faster than it has to.
09:50Curtains closed at dust,
09:52heavy ones if you have them,
09:54and the door shut.
09:55I have talked about that
09:57at length elsewhere,
09:58and I will not go over it again here.
10:01Now, the part that takes
10:03all of this further,
10:04and I want to be plain
10:05about where it comes from,
10:07because it is not ours,
10:09and I am not going to dress it up
10:11as Amish.
10:12In Brittany,
10:13and in the Scottish Highlands,
10:15in the Netherlands,
10:16and across a good deal
10:17of Northern Europe,
10:18from the 1600s
10:20right into living memory,
10:21ordinary people
10:23did not sleep
10:24in a room at all.
10:25They slept in a box.
10:28An enclosed wooden bed,
10:30like a cupboard,
10:31with sliding panels,
10:33or carved doors,
10:34or heavy curtains
10:35on every side.
10:36In French,
10:38it was called
10:38the closed bed.
10:40In Scotland,
10:41it was the box bed.
10:43Those people slept
10:45warm in stone cottages,
10:47with no heat whatever
10:49in the room,
10:49in winters
10:50that would frighten you.
10:52And here is the part
10:53that ties it
10:54to everything
10:55I have just said.
10:56The grand,
10:58four-poster bed
10:58with its curtains,
11:00the one we think of now
11:01as a rich man's ornament,
11:03was exactly the same invention
11:06in better cloth.
11:08The wealthy
11:09were doing precisely
11:10what the poorest crofter
11:12was doing,
11:13enclosing the sleeper.
11:15Because a closed bed
11:17is not insulating you
11:19from the room.
11:20It is keeping the heat
11:21you are making.
11:23Fifty cubic feet
11:25instead of two thousand.
11:27Half an hour
11:28of you lying in it,
11:29and the air in there
11:30is a great deal warmer
11:32than the room,
11:33and it stays that way
11:34till morning,
11:35and you did not burn
11:37anything to do it.
11:38And the same idea
11:40turns up in your own
11:41front room
11:42without anybody noticing.
11:44That high-backed
11:45wing chair,
11:47the one with the panels
11:48that come forward
11:49beside your head,
11:50was made to be
11:51pulled up to a fire.
11:53The wings are there
11:54to block the draft
11:56coming at your back
11:57and sides
11:57while the fire
11:58warms your front.
12:00Every part of that chair
12:02is a piece of
12:02heating equipment,
12:03and we turned it
12:05into a style of furniture.
12:07Now,
12:08how to have that
12:09tonight
12:09without building a thing
12:11or buying a thing?
12:12Push the head
12:14of your bed
12:14into a corner
12:15if you can,
12:16so two sides
12:17are walls already.
12:19Then,
12:20find the tallest thing
12:21you can stand
12:22beside the open side.
12:24A chair-back,
12:25a bookcase,
12:26a clothes rail,
12:28a stack of boxes.
12:30Drape a heavy blanket
12:31or a spare quilt
12:32from that high point
12:34across to the wall
12:35or the headboard
12:36so it makes a sloping roof
12:38over the head end
12:39of the bed
12:40and a wall
12:41down the open side.
12:43Leave the foot end open.
12:45Leave a good gap
12:47at the side.
12:48You want an alcove,
12:50not a sealed box.
12:52Then,
12:53put the warm bottle
12:54in the middle of it
12:5520 minutes
12:56before you get in.
12:58And now,
12:59that small amount
13:00of stored heat
13:01finally makes sense
13:02because for the first time
13:04you have matched
13:05the size of the heat source
13:07to the size of the space.
13:09One more thing
13:11about the bed
13:11you already have
13:13before anybody
13:14goes hanging blankets
13:15off chairs.
13:16Half of what a box bed does,
13:19an ordinary bed
13:20does badly
13:21because of where it stands.
13:23A bed in the middle
13:24of a floor
13:25with cold air
13:26moving around
13:27all four sides
13:28is the worst arrangement
13:30there is.
13:31A bed in a corner
13:33with its head
13:34against an inside wall
13:35rather than an outside one
13:37is a good deal better
13:39before you drape
13:40anything at all.
13:42If you can move it,
13:43move it.
13:44That costs nothing
13:46and takes ten minutes
13:47and you may find
13:49you need no blanket
13:50over a chair at all.
13:52And give it a fair trial.
13:54The first night
13:55in an alcove
13:56feels strange
13:57and a person
13:58notices the blanket
13:59over him
14:00more than the warmth.
14:01By the third night
14:03you will not
14:04think about it
14:05and that is when
14:06you will notice
14:07you have stopped
14:08waking at three.
14:10Now the cautions
14:11and these matter
14:13more than the method.
14:15Air.
14:16Never seal yourself in.
14:19The old box beds
14:20had gaps and doors
14:22that people left ajar
14:24and you want the foot open
14:26and a gap at the side.
14:28This works by holding
14:30your heat,
14:31not by holding
14:32your breath.
14:33Nothing burning.
14:35No candle,
14:36no lamp,
14:38no space heater,
14:39nothing with a flame
14:40or an element
14:41anywhere near
14:43draped cloth.
14:44You are hanging fabric
14:46over a bed
14:47and you must
14:48treat it accordingly.
14:50Not for a baby.
14:51Loose bedding
14:52and draped cloth
14:53around an infant
14:54is dangerous
14:56and this is not
14:57for a cot.
14:58A baby stays
14:59in its own bed
15:00with nothing loose
15:02in it
15:02and that is not
15:03a matter of opinion.
15:05And the big one.
15:06A cold bedroom
15:08is fine
15:09for a healthy adult
15:10under good bedding.
15:11It is not fine
15:13for everybody.
15:14If you are older
15:16or unwell
15:17or on certain medicines,
15:19a genuinely cold room
15:21carries real risk
15:22and a person
15:23can get into trouble
15:24overnight
15:25without waking up
15:27and knowing it.
15:28So this is not
15:29a license
15:30to turn the heat off.
15:31If you are in that group
15:33or if you are doing this
15:34for a parent,
15:35keep the room
15:36at a sensible temperature
15:37and use everything else
15:39in this video
15:40on top of it.
15:42Warm the bed as well
15:43rather than instead.
15:45And check on somebody
15:46living alone
15:47in a cold house.
15:49That is worth
15:50more than any of this.
15:51and damp
15:53which people forget
15:54entirely.
15:55Two people breathing
15:56all night
15:57in a shut bedroom
15:58put a good deal
16:00of water
16:00into that room
16:01and a cold room
16:02holds it
16:03on every cold surface.
16:05So air that bedroom
16:07properly in the morning
16:08with the covers
16:09thrown back
16:10which I have talked
16:11about before
16:12and do not
16:13dry washing
16:14in there.
16:15A damp bed
16:16is a cold bed
16:18no matter how much
16:19you pile on it
16:20because wet bedding
16:21conducts your heat
16:22away
16:23instead of holding it.
16:24There is no scheme
16:26in any of this
16:27and nobody
16:28arranged anything.
16:29The money
16:30simply runs
16:31the other way.
16:32The people selling
16:33buckets and lamps
16:35and miracle plates
16:36know exactly
16:37when in the year
16:38a person starts
16:39looking for a cheaper
16:41way to be warm.
16:42They are not
16:43hiding anything.
16:44It is only that
16:45nobody can charge
16:46you for your own
16:47body heat
16:48and a blanket
16:49over a chair back
16:50so nobody says it
16:51and a thing
16:52nobody has a reason
16:53to say
16:54gets forgotten
16:55inside of one
16:56generation.
16:57What got lost
16:58was not a product.
17:00It was a grandmother
17:01putting a boy's hand
17:03down into the straw
17:04beside the lambs.
17:05And one last word
17:07on why this was lost
17:08because it was not
17:10taken from anybody.
17:11The closed bed
17:13did not disappear
17:14because something
17:14better came along.
17:16Fuel got cheap
17:17for a while,
17:18central heating
17:19arrived,
17:20and an enclosed bed
17:21started to look
17:22old-fashioned
17:23and poor.
17:24Doctors of the day
17:26took against them
17:27and pushed for
17:28open windows
17:28and fresh night air.
17:30So families
17:31broke them up
17:32and some of them
17:33went for firewood
17:34and a thing
17:35that kept a family
17:36warm on no fuel
17:37at all
17:38went into museums
17:39as a curiosity.
17:41Nobody hid it.
17:42We decided
17:43we were too
17:44modern for it
17:45and then we forgot
17:46it entirely
17:47and now there is
17:48a trade selling us
17:49a bucket of rock
17:50salt instead.
17:52So here is what
17:53I would have you
17:54do tonight
17:54and it costs
17:55nothing at all.
17:57Go up to your
17:58bedroom with the
17:59heat on.
17:59Stand on something
18:01safe and hold
18:02the flat of your
18:03hand up near the
18:04ceiling for a moment.
18:05Then crouch down
18:07and hold it
18:08at the height
18:08of your bed.
18:09The difference
18:10you feel
18:11is your heat
18:11and your money
18:12up there
18:13doing nothing
18:14for you
18:15on its way
18:16out through the
18:16roof.
18:17Then hang
18:18one blanket
18:19just one
18:20off the back
18:21of a chair
18:22over the head
18:23end of the bed
18:23and put a warm
18:25bottle in 20 minutes
18:26before you get in.
18:28One night.
18:29That is all
18:30I am asking.
18:31So tell me
18:32in the comments
18:33whether your
18:33grandmother had
18:34a hot water bottle
18:35or a hot brick
18:36or a soap stone
18:38or one of those
18:39long handled
18:39warming pans
18:41and tell me
18:41what she wrapped
18:42it in
18:43because that detail
18:44is the sort of thing
18:45that goes out
18:46of the world
18:46quietly
18:47and I would like
18:48it written down
18:48somewhere.
18:49And if you are
18:50new here
18:51tell me what you
18:52heat with
18:52so I know
18:53who I am
18:54talking to.
18:55Next time
18:56I want to find
18:56the cold air
18:57that is coming
18:58into that bedroom
18:59whether you invite
19:00it or not
19:00because some
19:01of what you
19:02are fighting
19:02is not the room
19:03being cold
19:04it is a thin
19:06steady draft
19:07you cannot feel
19:08with a hand.
19:09A lit candle
19:10carried slowly
19:11round the edges
19:12of a room
19:13will show you
19:13every bit of it
19:14in 20 minutes
19:15and you will
19:16watch it move.
19:18You are the stove.
19:20The only question
19:21is how big a room
19:22you are trying
19:23to heat with it.
19:24The people
19:25who built this country
19:26with their hands
19:27knew that
19:27and we are only
19:28just starting
19:29to remember it.