If you had $1 Million in the PP, can you live off of that?

[Pointedstick]

Sadly, usable mass transit systems are a rarity in this country. The New York metro area is really the gold star, and when I lived there I in no way felt deprived without a car. But nothing else remotely compares. I have co-workers who live carless in San Francisco and they pretty much can't leave it without flying or renting a Zipcar.

Also I feel like municipal services are overrated. Your standard water, gas, and electricity are things you're paying for in addition to your local and city tax burden; same with most public transit systems. That leaves the fire department, police, public schools and maybe libraries? You can eliminate any reliance on the former two mostly through better decisions (having a dog and a gun, building a house out of materials that don't burn), and the latter two seem much more strongly impacted by local culture than tax revenue though.

In general, I don't see a high degree of correlation between tax rates and quality free municipal services. Some of the most notoriously dangerous and corrupt police for example operate in high tax cities like Chicago.

[MachineGhost]

What do you drive, MG? A hemi cuda from the 70s?

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[MachineGhost]

I am totally going to live in a house like that someday. Not sure if it'll have the frowny-face windows though. Should be able to totally do away with monthly mortgage/rent, electricity, water, sewer, heating, cooling, and insurance costs.

Not sure how manly that is, but I guess it could leave more money left over in the budget for ammunition.

How does the earthbag house cool and warm?  Does it work on the earth's inertial temperature like the Enertia?  One of the issues with the Enertia homes is the outside chamber that circulates hot and cold tends to be very humid, though they may have fixed this over time.  But on the other hand, you can live in an Enertia in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, etc. below zero without requiring any heating.

[MachineGhost]

Ah, good point. I was about to give up on my Washington state side of Portland dream and move out in the sticks!

I noticed three counties bordering Oregon had the least amount of bueaucracy for building your own home.  The two near the coast might be interesting, although I think they may be low income, meth-infested areas.  And the one in the middle is arid and may not have any decent shopping over the border.

The problem with cheap, rural areas is they're typically arid, not just redneckish.  It's bloody boring, unless you're such an old coot desert rat that swears off all human contact.  Even I wouldn't go that far and I'm not a fan of the human population and all their B.S. to begin with.

[Pointedstick]

How does the earthbag house cool and warm?  Does it work on the earth's inertial temperature like the Enertia?  One of the issues with the Enertia homes is the outside chamber that circulates hot and cold tends to be very humid, though they may have fixed this over time.  But on the other hand, you can live in an Enertia in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, etc. below zero without requiring any heating.

Kind of. It depends on the climate, but in general, you use a certain amount of thermal mass and insulation to create a thermal flywheel effect (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_mass). What happens is that your thermal mass heats up and cools down on a time lag because it's so big. It works very well even with no insulation in areas with big fluctuations in daytime and nighttime temperatures.

For example, with a 14-16 inch earth wall and no insulation, it will take heat originating outside the house about 12 hours to reach the interior because the mass retards the speed of conduction. As a result, the sun shines on the walls all day and heats them up, but that heat only starts to reach the interior at night when it's much colder. And the cool outside temperature cools down the walls as night, making the house not overheat during the day.

In colder climates, the averaged out interior temperature may be too cold, so what you want to to is introduce solar heat directly inside the house using large south-facing windows, and keep it from escaping by insulating the exterior of your thermal mass walls and insulating the windows when there's no sun coming through them. To prevent the house from overheating in summer, you shade the windows so they don't receive much direct sunlight. You can take advantage of the differing heights of the sun in the sky between seasons using wide roof overhangs which block the high summer sun but admit the low winter sun.

Some people use a lot of mass and insulation to extend the time lag of their thermal flywheel out into entire seasons! That way your mass heats up during the summer and releases the heat during winter. This is called Passive Annual Heat Storage (http://books.google.com/books?id=Frbtc4 ... &q&f=false). It usually requires partially burying the house, and insulating and keeping dry the earth used to bury it. What happens is that the massive earth soaks up all available heat during the summer, but is insulated from the surrounding earth, so in winter when the interior of the house gets colder, that heat has to escape into the house rather than being neutralized by the ground. It's very clever.

[KevinW]

http://www.mymoneyblog.com/state-tax-ra ... mpare.html

Looks like avoiding liberal states in general, and urban areas specifically are very impactful ways to reduce your retirement tax burden.

I responded to this in the "best states" thread since I thought it fit better there: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... 619#p45619

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If I were trying to build my own semi-off-grid home to blend in reasonably well with traditional Western aesthetics and building codes, I'd probably use slipform stone if fieldstones were available locally ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipform_stonemasonry ), a log cabin with a lot of insulation if timbers were available locally, or earth-sheltered dry-stacked concrete blocks ( http://www.drystacked.com/ ).

[Pointedstick]

Wow, that slipform stonemasonry stuff looks really cool! The downside is definitely the moving formwork requirement. If I was going to do build with a method that required external formwork, I'd probably go with rammed earth, which can also produce very "western" looking buildings:










The problem with that kind of complicated formwork is that it makes it very difficult to build yourself. But if you're going to use a contractor anyway, then hey, you might as well!