Why Amish Houses Never Feel Cold... The $0 Trick Heating Companies Hide

My name is Isaac Miller. I am Amish, and I have run a forge in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania for thirty-one years. The house I live in was built in 1889 with no furnace in it, and it does not feel cold. You keep the thermostat at sixty-eight. You have had the furnace serviced. Your gas bill still climbs every January, and your feet are cold in bed anyway. You did the work and the problem came back. The method failed you, not the other way around. Cold does not push into your house. Heat pulls out the top, and every cubic foot that escapes draws a cubic foot of January in across your ankles. Your house is a chimney you happen to live inside. The book word is the stack effect. Warm air climbs and leaves through the attic hatch, the gaps around the chimney, the tops of interior walls and the stairwell. In 1977, Princeton researchers at Twin Rivers, New Jersey found hidden air passages into the attics carrying away close to a third of the heating energy. Every draft you feel at the baseboard was invited by a hole in the ceiling. At dusk I put the lid on the house. Weight the attic hatch, close the doors to empty rooms with a towel at the gap, shut the fireplace damper, end the curtains at the sill, and put towels at the exterior doors. Ten minutes, nothing bought. Rope caulk and window film add about twenty dollars a season. The Department of Energy figures a household spends near a thousand dollars a winter on heat, and a quarter to a third leaves through air leaks. Set that against a service contract at $240, a smart thermostat at $250, or a new furnace at $7,500. In this video I show you why cold is really heat leaving, how the stack effect works, the five steps of the lid, why a curtain should stop at the sill, how to use rope caulk and window film, how to find leaks with a candle, and how the cost compares with a new furnace. I also tell you where it falls short. The lid will not fix a house with no insulation, and a closed upstairs bedroom will be less cold, not warm. WHAT YOU WILL NEED A folded blanket and a box of books, free Bath towels or a draft snake, free Rope caulk, about $8 a roll Window film, about $12 for five windows A candle, about a penny Carbon monoxide alarm, about $20 A WORD OF CAUTION If you heat with any flame, whether gas furnace, wood stove or water heater, do not seal the house so tight that the fire starves for air. Keep a working carbon monoxide alarm. Old houses breathed for a reason. We are slowing the breath, not stopping it. I put up plain, old-fashioned ways to keep a house, a shop and a family running for next to nothing, and you are welcome to subscribe for the next one. #amish #homeheating #drafts #energysavings #winterprep #oldfashioned #homemaintenance #isaacmiller