rhoda_bruce
Almost Self-Reliant
I live in a house that was built a long time ago by my family for business reasons and it has been my home for almost 25 years. In the beginning we discovered it was real hot and costly to cool off, so we stayed outside a lot during the day, doing things around the house and kept the ACs off.
We planted young cypresses around the place and it took a long time to get them big enough to make a difference, but they are finally giants and my house seems to be hidden in a small forest.
It takes hours for the sun to be able to really hit on my roof, and then after a couple of hours, it starts to set in the west and we are shaded again.
I could have better insulated. When Mom and Dad had this big old thing built, they hired a man to blow in insulation and he must have seen them coming a mile away, cause boy.....did he pull one on them. We only had one foot of powdery junk at the bottom of each wall. Apparently the insulation, which was supposed to be hard foam, disentigrated.
Well after Katrina we lifted the house 8ft and ripped all the siding off the house, put insulation, tar paper and applied cypress boards and between all that and the little forest, its tolerable.
We had a concrete slab poured about 2 years ago and spend time under the house. Its really not too bad.
My brother has been after my husband to let him cut the cypresses and mill them ever since Katrina. He claims we will be sorry if one of them falls on our house. Well the tops of 2 of them did fall on our house, but we were fine. The trees seem a lot stronger than most trees and if something will break on them, it seems to be only the very top. In fact the trees stop wind from hitting my house.
Also my yard floods if the rains come down too fast for the pumping stations to get the water over the levee. Well now, all the puddles disappear a lot faster than they used to.....its the trees sucking it up.
They were a very good investment. It took years to get a return on it, but I know its paying me off now.
In the beginning we were green ourselves and bought trees as we could at nurseries, but then we discovered buying them from our state co-op, in bulk, so we ordered 150 cypresses and 500 pines. Thats not for just our yard......some of it is in my sister, next door's yard.
Anyway....thats my story and I'm sticking to it.
We planted young cypresses around the place and it took a long time to get them big enough to make a difference, but they are finally giants and my house seems to be hidden in a small forest.
It takes hours for the sun to be able to really hit on my roof, and then after a couple of hours, it starts to set in the west and we are shaded again.
I could have better insulated. When Mom and Dad had this big old thing built, they hired a man to blow in insulation and he must have seen them coming a mile away, cause boy.....did he pull one on them. We only had one foot of powdery junk at the bottom of each wall. Apparently the insulation, which was supposed to be hard foam, disentigrated.
Well after Katrina we lifted the house 8ft and ripped all the siding off the house, put insulation, tar paper and applied cypress boards and between all that and the little forest, its tolerable.
We had a concrete slab poured about 2 years ago and spend time under the house. Its really not too bad.
My brother has been after my husband to let him cut the cypresses and mill them ever since Katrina. He claims we will be sorry if one of them falls on our house. Well the tops of 2 of them did fall on our house, but we were fine. The trees seem a lot stronger than most trees and if something will break on them, it seems to be only the very top. In fact the trees stop wind from hitting my house.
Also my yard floods if the rains come down too fast for the pumping stations to get the water over the levee. Well now, all the puddles disappear a lot faster than they used to.....its the trees sucking it up.
They were a very good investment. It took years to get a return on it, but I know its paying me off now.
In the beginning we were green ourselves and bought trees as we could at nurseries, but then we discovered buying them from our state co-op, in bulk, so we ordered 150 cypresses and 500 pines. Thats not for just our yard......some of it is in my sister, next door's yard.
Anyway....thats my story and I'm sticking to it.
